How to pass commands to a . exe via C#?

Question

I wanted to call through an application in C# a .exe any and pass them some commands as soon as it opened. For example, what I want to do at the moment is that the program opens, give three Tabs and fill in the past values and give three more Tabs.

Does anyone know if it’s possible to do this with C#?

Follow what I’ve tried:

System.Diagnostics.Process processo = new System.Diagnostics.Process();
System.Diagnostics.ProcessStartInfo startInfo = new System.Diagnostics.ProcessStartInfo();
startInfo.WindowStyle = System.Diagnostics.ProcessWindowStyle.Normal;
startInfo.FileName = @"C:\Users\VICTOR\Desktop\Test.exe";
startInfo.Arguments = "\t \t \t 0 \t 0 \t 0 \t 0 \t 0 \t 0 \t 0 \t 0 \t 0 \t 0 \t \t \t";
System.Diagnostics.Process.Start(startInfo);

Answer 1

You can do it like this:

First import the function SetForegroundWindow of user32.dll in your class:

[DllImport("user32.dll")]
static extern int SetForegroundWindow(IntPtr point);

And to send the keys you use SendKeys

    System.Diagnostics.Process processo;

    System.Diagnostics.ProcessStartInfo startInfo = new System.Diagnostics.ProcessStartInfo();
    startInfo.WindowStyle = System.Diagnostics.ProcessWindowStyle.Normal;
    startInfo.FileName = @"c:\Windows\notepad.exe";

    // inicia o processo
    processo = System.Diagnostics.Process.Start(startInfo);
    // aguarda até que o processo esteja pronto para receber entrada
    processo.WaitForInputIdle();
    // traz a janela principal pro primeiro plano
    SetForegroundWindow(processo.MainWindowHandle);

    // envia as teclas pro programa
    SendKeys.Send("{TAB 3}0{TAB}0{TAB}0{TAB}0{TAB}0{TAB}0{TAB}0{TAB}0{TAB}0{TAB}0{TAB 3}");

The complete documentation of the class SendKeys can be seen here

Answer 2

Here you don’t have the full answer but a kick start.

User entries (which you want to simulate) are sent to a form (in practice, a Windows window that contains many other windows) through a mechanism called "windows messages".

Windows offers an API for you to send these messages: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ms644950(v=vs.85). aspx.

The C# does not have an abstraction of this API, so you will have to use it directly as Windows API itself. In this example, citizen sends messages from a C# application to Notepad (makes the application write text to Notepad).

Basically, you have to locate the other application’s process, identify in this other process the Handle from the window ("form") to which you want to send the messages, and then send the messages.