Win32's FindWindow() can find a particular window with the exact title, but what about “try.bat - Notepad”?

Question

Win32\'s FindWindow() can find a window having the title of \"Untitled - Notepad\", but what if I just want to find a Notepad window but don\'t know whether it

Answer 1

I would follow Eric's advice to use EnumWindows. You can provide Ruby callbacks to Windows API functions through win32-api. Here's an example that was trivially modified from the sample in the win32-api README:

require 'win32/api'
include Win32

# Callback example - Enumerate windows
EnumWindows     = API.new('EnumWindows', 'KP', 'L', 'user32')
GetWindowText   = API.new('GetWindowText', 'LPI', 'I', 'user32')
EnumWindowsProc = API::Callback.new('LP', 'I'){ |handle, param|
  buf = "\0" * 200
  GetWindowText.call(handle, buf, 200);

  if (!buf.index(param).nil?)
    puts "window was found: handle #{handle}"
    0 # stop looking after we find it
  else
    1
  end
}

EnumWindows.call(EnumWindowsProc, 'Firefox')

Answer 2

The 1st argument of FindWindow searches by class name, if you use "Notepad" (Notepad's main window class name) for this and a null title you would get the 1st matching handle irrespective of its caption.

Answer 3

You almost certainly want to use the EnumWindows function; this function will call you back with a window handle, and then you can use GetWindowText to inspect the window title and find the one you want.

Now, I have no idea how to write a callback function in Ruby, so you'll need some help there.