How can I run another application within a panel of my C program

Question

I ve been reading lots on how to trigger an application from inside a C  program  Process Start     but I haven t been able to find any information on how to have this new application run within a panel of my C  program   For example  I d like a button click to open a notepad exe WITHIN my application  not externally

User · Answer

I know this is possible if the other application can attach itself to a win32 window handle  For example  we have a separate C  application that hosts a DirectX application inside one of its windows  I m not familiar with the exact details of how this is implemented  but I think just passing the win32 Handle of your panel to the other application is enough for that application to attach its DirectX surface

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Adding some solution in Answer       This code has helped me to dock some executable in windows form  like NotePad  Excel  word  Acrobat reader n many more     But it wont work for some applications  As sometimes when you start process of some application     wait for idle time    and the try to get its mainWindowHandle     till the time the main window handle becomes null       so I have done one trick to solve this  If you get main window handle as null    then search all the runnning processes on sytem and find you process     then get the main hadle of the process and the set panel as its parent           ProcessStartInfo info   new ProcessStartInfo            info FileName    xxxxxxxxxxxx exe           info Arguments    yyyyyyyyyy           info UseShellExecute   true          info CreateNoWindow   true          info WindowStyle   ProcessWindowStyle Maximized          info RedirectStandardInput   false          info RedirectStandardOutput   false          info RedirectStandardError   false           System Diagnostics Process p   System Diagnostics Process Start info             p WaitForInputIdle            Thread Sleep 3000            Process   p1       if p MainWindowHandle    null                List lt String gt  arrString   new List lt String gt             foreach  Process p1 in Process GetProcesses                             Console WriteLine p1 MainWindowHandle               arrString Add Convert ToString p1 ProcessName                      p1   Process GetProcessesByName  xxxxxxxxxxxx              p WaitForInputIdle            Thread Sleep 5000         SetParent p1 0  MainWindowHandle  this panel2 Handle              else            SetParent p MainWindowHandle  this panel2 Handle

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I notice that all the prior answers use older Win32 User library functions to accomplish this  I think this will work in most cases  but will work less reliably over time   Now  not having done this  I can t tell you how well it will work  but I do know that a current Windows technology might be a better solution  the Desktop Windows Manager API   DWM is the same technology that lets you see live thumbnail previews of apps using the taskbar and task switcher UI  I believe it is closely related to Remote Terminal services   I think that a probable problem that might happen when you force an app to be a child of a parent window that is not the desktop window is that some application developers will make assumptions about the device context  DC   pointer  mouse  position  screen widths  etc   which may cause erratic or problematic behavior when it is  embedded  in the main window   I suspect that you can largely eliminate these problems by relying on DWM to help you manage the translations necessary to have an application s windows reliably be presented and interacted with inside another application s container window   The documentation assumes C   programming  but I found one person who has produced what he claims is an open source C  wrapper library  https   bytes com topic c-sharp answers 823547-desktop-window-manager-wrapper  The post is old  and the source is not on a big repository like GitHub  bitbucket  or sourceforge  so I don t know how current it is

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I don t know if this is still the recommended thing to use but the  Object Linking and Embedding  framework allows you to embed certain objects controls directly into your application   This will probably only work for certain applications  I m not sure if Notepad is one of them   For really simple things like notepad  you ll probably have an easier time just working with the text box controls provided by whatever medium you re using  e g  WinForms    Here s a link to OLE info to get started   http   en wikipedia org wiki Object Linking and Embedding

User · Answer

Using the win32 API it is possible to  eat  another application  Basically you get the top window for that application and set it s parent to be the handle of the panel you want to place it in  If you don t want the MDI style effect you also have to adjust the window style to make it maximised and remove the title bar   Here is some simple sample code where I have a form with a button and a panel   using System  using System Collections Generic  using System ComponentModel  using System Data  using System Drawing  using System Linq  using System Text  using System Windows Forms  using System Diagnostics  using System Runtime InteropServices  using System Threading   namespace WindowsFormsApplication2       public partial class Form1   Form               public Form1                         InitializeComponent                       private void button1 Click object sender  EventArgs e                        Process p   Process Start  notepad exe                Thread Sleep 500      Allow the process to open it s window             SetParent p MainWindowHandle  panel1 Handle                       DllImport  user32 dll            static extern IntPtr SetParent IntPtr hWndChild  IntPtr hWndNewParent               I just saw another example where they called WaitForInputIdle instead of sleeping  So the code would be like this   Process p   Process Start  notepad exe    p WaitForInputIdle    SetParent p MainWindowHandle  panel1 Handle     The Code Project has a good article one the whole process  Hosting EXE Applications in a WinForm project

User · Answer

If you want to run notepad inside your app you would probably be better of with a text editor component  There s obviously a basic text box that comes with WinForms  but I suspect more advanced components that offer Notepad functionality  or better  can be found on the interweb

User · Answer

Another interesting solution to luch an exeternal application with a WinForm container is the follow    DllImport  user32 dll    static extern IntPtr SetParent IntPtr hWndChild  IntPtr hWndNewParent     private void Form1 Load object sender  EventArgs e        ProcessStartInfo psi   new ProcessStartInfo  notepad exe        psi WindowStyle   ProcessWindowStyle Minimized      Process p   Process Start psi       Thread Sleep 500       SetParent p MainWindowHandle  panel1 Handle       CenterToScreen        psi WindowStyle   ProcessWindowStyle Normal      The step to  ProcessWindowStyle Minimized from ProcessWindowStyle Normal remove the annoying delay

User · Answer

Short Answer  No Shortish Answer  Only if the other application is designed to allow it  by providing components for you to add into your own application

[c#] How can I run another application within a panel of my C# program?

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