What technique does Snoop uses to inspect a WPF application

Question

Snoop, the spy utility, uses some powerful technique (probably some sort of reflection) to inspect a running WPF application. Most interesting is the fact, that Snnop is able to

Answer 1

Snoop doesn't inspect a WPF from the outside. It injects itself into the application and actually adds the magnify or snoop window to it. Thats also why when you exit snoop the inspection windows actually stay open.

So the 'inspection' code simply inspects the window it wants and it can use all avaible WPF functions to do so. Like the VisualTreeHelper and LogicalTreeHelper as mentioned here earlier.

For a small test framework i build i injected code to add a small proxy object so i can control the application easily (press buttons, change values, execute functions on viewmodels etc).