I was wondering either it is possible to run an external application inside a QT widget under windows operating system. For example, if I were to write a Qt gui application, where in one of the dialogs user could write some text, I could use a textbox there or something similar. But instead, would it be possible to run Notepad++ or windows notepad application in that dialog?
I would appreciate all help.
It is not really practical to do what you describe at the application level, embedding an entire process into a window of another. (It would be technically difficult and the user experience would likely be pretty bad if you could pull it off.)
Fortunately, this very problem of application components has already been solved!
So it is possible to get the end result you describe via a slightly different mechanism. Many applications expose COM interfaces for automation and embedding, and it is possible to embed COM objects within a Qt application.
(Older technologies such as DDE, OLE and ActiveX provided various aspects of this but are all basically deprecated in favour of COM AFAIK.)
Hopefully you can find a COM object from a third party, or find an app that exposes its components via COM and assemble your app that way.
Have a look at the Qt documentation:
Active Qt - ActiveX and COM support for Qt
Related
I have a task to automate Qt QML based desktop applications through open source frameworks. I am completely new to testing and also to Qt QML. I am good with Java and Python and also Javascript.
Can someone please suggest a way to write automation tests for Qt QML desktop application?
Can I code things to read the elements and widgets in the Qt QML applications?, So I can validate various cases.
If so, are there any tutorials or sample automation test projects for Qt QML applications?
Have a look at Spix. Once you link against it, you can remote control your QML UI by sending fake events, either from C++, or from a script using RPC. Any scripting language that supports XML-RPC, like python, can be used.
This way, you can automate and test your Qt/QML application.
Objects are identified by paths, so you don't have to deal with coordinates. Spix finds the item by the objectName property set in QML.
You can also query object properties from the script...
The library is fairly new and under development, but I think it already covers a lot of the more common use cases in desktop apps...
I'm having to use an SDK modeled on Microsoft's COM. I'm developing for Windows in C++.
I found this article that implies one can "use COM in Qt", but it is not clear whether they mean to register my own, new COM interface or whether they mean I can use an existing one that wasn't created in Qt (they speak of "creating a COM server").
The question is whether this is possible in Qt and whether this is somewhat of a hack or standard practice. If it is possible, would it make a difference if Qt is using the MinGW or VS compiler?
You can read in the Qt documentation about Active Qt module :
Qt's ActiveX and COM support allows Qt for Windows developers to:
Access and use ActiveX controls and COM objects provided by any ActiveX server in their Qt applications.
Make their Qt applications available as COM servers, with any number of Qt objects and widgets as COM objects and ActiveX controls.
So the answer is that you can easily use existing com objects and activex controls created with any language in your Qt application with the API provided by the Active Qt module. You can either use VS compiler or MinGW.
I'm trying to understand event hooks in C++. I know what an event is, I've used them a lot in Java, C# and Javascript.
What I'm having trouble with is finding the documentation, and tutorials on stuff like global hooks, dll injection, global hooks without a DLL.
Lets say that I wanted to iterate through the browser tabis in FireFox .. would I need to hope that FireFox has an API for C++? Or lets say I wanted to do something when a user opens a new tab would I need to use a hook that FireFox would provide in their API?
The above is just an example so people know what I'm trying to learn/understand. Am I thinking on the right ines?
I seen a post on a forum and for the past 2 hours I've took an interest. I always say that a tricky challange, or a new challange, makes a stronger programmer.
Any resources, or any help, would be very much appreciated.
C++ itself does not have events or hooks, but a lot of C++ libraries and frameworks implement them. For an example of generic events library, see Boost.Signals.
Some of the implementations allow their events to be seen by other applications, but the API is application-specific (e.g. for Firefox, see XPCOM).
Windows has a mechanizm of hooks that allows to monitor various events in its windowing system. However, it is an OS feature, not related to C++. As it's a system mechanizm, all Windows applications are affected even if they don't do anything for it. The documentation for Windows hooks can be found here. Also, since you mentioned "global hooks without a DLL", see SetWinEventHook, which is a higher-level API than Windows hooks linked above and can be used with hook functions both implemented in DLLs or EXEs.
Look up MSDN for SetWindowsHookEx. It should be your entrance in Windows hooks. If you ar etargetting a parituclar window for mthe system then a less intrusive option is SetWindowLongPtr. For the first API you are going to need some Dll injection - which gets automatically for you by the system. Just follow these steps:
Create a Dll that exports a HOOKPROC function (actual type dependent upon the hook tpe - read in the docs)
Load that Dll in your application and retrieve a pointer to the HOOKPROC function. LoadLibrary / GetProcAddress APIs may be used for this.
From your application, make a call to SetWindowsHookEx feeding in the appropriate parameters - this will inject the dll in the target process. So, the dll is now loaded into both your app's process and in the target process. So you will need a mechanism to IPC between the two processes probably. Lots of ways here - sockets, pipes, shared segment in DLL, filesystem, windows messages, COM servers + events, etc etc.
The former API, while less powerful, does not require DLL injection.
Choose wisely & good luck!
I dont think firefox would be having a C++ aPI to find the open tabs....
If you want to find out open tabs or whenever a new tab is open , you can basically hook the firefox window and get all events happening on that window to your hook procedure.
If you open spy++ in VC++ and track firefox window , you can see a new MozillaContentWindowClass gets created every time whenever a new tab is opened. So you can basically iterate through window handles and get information about open tabs.
You can use SetWindowLongPtr to set the subclass procedure for that window.
I'm porting an audio processing application written in C++ from Windows to Windows Mobile (version 5+). Basically what I need to port is the GUI. The application is quite complicated and the GUI will need to be able to offer a lot of functionality. I would like to create a touch friendly user interface that also looks good. Which basically means that standard WinMo controls are out the window.
I've looked at libraries such as Fluid and they look like something I would like to use. However, as I said I'm developing i C++. Even though it would be possible to only write the GUI part i some .NET language I rather not. My experience with .NET on Windows Mobile is that it doesn't work very well...
Can anyone either suggest a C/C++ touch friendly GUI library for Windows Mobile or some kind of "best practices" document/how-to on how to use the standard Windows Mobile controls in order to make the touch friendly and also work and look well in later versions of Windows Mobile (in particular version 6.5)?
There are two aspects to your question:
Libraries. For this I would take a look at Qt for CE/WinMo. The C++ alternative is MFC.
GUI Design. About Face and Designing Interfaces (J. Tidwell) are a couple of good books.
Also:
make sure that your UI is finger-friendly, I hate it when I have to use a stylus.
keep in mind that on touch screens you can't have tooltips (no mouse over) and you don't have a mouse pointer. WinMo uses click and long click, but the latter is not easily discoverable.
add joystick UI navigation
don't try to cram too many controls on the tiny screen, use tabs or drill-down menus
I don't know any good C++ libs but you could try SlideUI mobile controls (it is in .NET), but you wouldn’t need any specific knowledge to use it and it's available via design time and easy to use.
http://www.devslide.com/products/slideui
Disclosure: I am affiliated with devslide.
I have a VB6 application that I don't have source code. This application uses third-party ActiveX controls. I want to automate these ActiveX controls. Is it possible to get the IUnknowns or Object references? For some of these, I can get the underlying HWNDs, but from what I can tell there isn't a generic way to convert these HWNDs to the ActiveX control.
Some testing software allows you to script VB6 applications with ActiveX controls. How do they do it?
Are these ActiveX controls in a separate DLL? If so, you can use OLE View (an VS 6.0 tool) to open the dll and view all the interfaces, coclasse and etc.
You might be able to using DLL injection via Microsoft Research Detours library. Basically you'd want to hook the cocreate for those specific controls. You will need to be ultra careful especially if you do anything cross-thread/cross-process (COM threading rules are vitally important).
On whole Detours is easy to use... but I've never tried it with COM routines. You might want to look at a different solution.
Also note that Detours has some licensing restrictions on it that may affect your ability to distribute it.
Testing software may well just send the appropriate WM_XXX messages to the particular windows in question (eg. WM_MOUSEMOVE).
Sorry to say but the VB6 EXE don't contain the manifests needed to pull out the COM objects it uses. You best bet is trying some of rbobby's suggestions especially about sending WM_XXX messages.