Get all opened desktop applications using WPF

Question

I am trying to create a Visual Tree Explorer application (like Snoop, Mole) which should automatically identify all desktop applications and detect whether it is a WPF app. or not. I am tring to do this in WPF. Is there any way to get all WPF opened applications. Any special API, or native functions in system dlls, etc.

Regards,

Jawahar

Answer 1

I think you can iterate through the list of all processes and for those processes who have a window, check if the window class name starts with HwndWrapper (I've noticed the WPF windows have a class name like this: HwndWrapper[DefaultDomain;;2e60e21a-8752-4daf-820b-aed289668930])

The code should be something like this:

Process[] procs = Process.GetProcesses();
foreach(Process p in procs)
{
    if (p.MainWindowHandle != null)
    {
        Console.WriteLine(p.MainWindowTitle);
        StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder(257);
        RealGetWindowClass(p.MainWindowHandle, sb, 256);
        Console.WriteLine(sb.ToString());
        if(sb.ToString().StartsWith("HwndWrapper"))
        {
            Console.WriteLine("WPF window");
        }
    }
}

[DllImport("user32.dll")]
static extern uint RealGetWindowClass(IntPtr hwnd, [Out] StringBuilder pszType, uint cchType);

with maybe some adjustments depending on your case. When dealing with such a window, one should assume it's a WPF window not take it for a certainty, so error checking must be extensive.