|Last Modification: December 11, 1999|
How can I get the text of another process' window?
As you've probably found out by now, calling
work most of the time. The
reason for this is that
GetWindowText() won't do the necessary translation
between the address spaces of the two processes. This is required because
address that the calling process passes to
GetWindowText() in the
parameter is not valid in the address space of the target process, so some
translation is required.
However, there is one way to get around it, and that is sending a
message to the target window. Now you might be wondering how this could work,
if, after all,
GetWindowText() sends a
WM_GETTEXT message as part of its
The answer is that Windows treats some messages differently when they are
sent directly across process boundaries, and provides support for address
translation (which is not a translation at all. Windows uses memory mapped files
to accomplish the copy).
WM_GETTEXT is one of those, as are
Keep in mind, however, that this will not work for all windows, for the
simple reason that they do not store their text using
WM_SETTEXT and use their
own buffers for it, but don't handle the
WM_GETTEXT message appropriately.
Finally, note that
GetWindowText() will work under some
circumstances, namely, when the target window passes
WM_SETTEXT messages to
DefWindowProc(). In this case, Windows holds the window text itself in internal
structures, which happens to be saved in memory shared by all processes (a
memory-mapped file), so
GetWindowText() will retrieve the text directly, without
needing to go across process boundaries.