CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c++visual-studio-2008mfccontextmenu
Taylor Scanlon
Taylor Scanlon

Reputation: 70

Accessing a right click context menu from an external application

After performing some Google-fu and searching Stack Overflow I've been unable to find a way to access the right click menu of an item and read data or select an item from it. I've looked up methods for SendMessage and PostMessage

What I've done so far:

This is an example of post here that would have been exactly what I want if it didn't use Qt and would work on an external application. Everything I've been able to find is about creating a right click menu when I just want to view an external application's right click menu.

I've tried getting the handle of the context menu using Spy++ but the menu just disappears as soon as I select the "Find Window" option in Spy++ (which is to be expected).

The only way I could think of doing this is using mouse_event to display the box but then I don't know where to go from there. I feel like this would also be very inefficient.

I'm working on some legacy code so I don't have a lot of choice in what I can use, if it's possible I'd like to not use libraries that aren't included in Visual Studio 2008.

What I'm trying to do:

I'm looking for a way to access the right click context menu in an external application and read the data in it and then select an item. I feel like this should be really simple but my research skills are subpar. If anyone can point me in the right direction I would really appreciate it.

Thank you for reading!

Upvotes: 3

Views: 2704

Answers (1)

GazTheDestroyer
GazTheDestroyer

Reputation: 21261

The only way you can get hold of a context menu is to make the application display it. It doesn't exist otherwise. (The other question you give as an example is regarding the Windows Shell menu which is designed to be useable)

A window gets sent WM_CONTEXTMENU when the user right clicks, so you could use SendMessage() to invoke the menu, or failing that just send a right click.

After a bit of googling, I think context menus have a classname of #32768, so you could use FindWindowEx to find a child window handle with the matching classname.

Once you have the window handle, you can use the MN_GETHMENU message to get hold of the menu handle.

Upvotes: 3

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