Selecting an item from pop-up menu

Question

I'm trying to make an application that will test some features of an existing app and I wanted it not to be window-size dependent and not to require focusing the window or etc.

I've already figured out how to get window handles for different controls in the tested app so I can click buttons, enter text to textboxes etc. with Send/Post Message but still got a few unsolved problems.

The first is selecting an item from a pop-up menu that can be triggered by button click (TAdvGlowMenuButton class) or right click somewhere- I can't even see any messages related to it in Spy++ so I have no idea how to do it, is it possible to select an item by name? as I don't have it's id

The second thing is clicking next to something, for example 10 pixels to the right of a button. I have the button handle so I can get it's size and it's parent but I still don't know how to get it's position inside the parent - any ideas?:)

And also a quick one but I don't believe it is possible - can I somehow get position of a label in the tested app? I can't even see it in Spy++ .

I hope you can help me to find it out ;)

Edit: I forgot about the most important thing:P , I'd like to achieve it with Send/Post Message if only it is possible.

Answer 1

My recommendation would be to abandon the message sending/posting model altogether and instead use UI Automation . Automated testing tools is exactly what the UI Automation APIs were designed for, and they are much more capable than SendMessage/PostMessage.

Yes, I realize that this is exactly the opposite of the answer you were looking for. But you will have no end of trouble getting messages to do what you want. A fair number of them rely on the application having the focus, and it is completely reasonable for your code to make this assumption when you receive eg a WM_KEYDOWN message. A testing tool should not flag that as a bug.

I notice you've tagged this question with the C# and .NET tags. In that case, you may be interested to learn that the UI Automation APIs have been wrapped in the .NET Framework .