How to programmatically use or connect multiple C# applications?

Question

I'm about to embark on a project to automate a manual process that involves many different desktop applications. I'm wondering if there is any way to expose interfaces that already exist and use them in my application. Most of the manual tasks just involve filling in a form in an existing application and pressing a button. I'm not sure if this will be relevant to the solution or not, but the tasks sometimes take many hours to run.

Because I'll only be filling in existing forms and there's not really any need to change the existing apps, I'd prefer not to have to do lots of work with the existing applications. If something like this seems like a good solution though, please let me know.

So, my main question is, what would be the best way to automate this process? Should I import the existing applications as libraries? Is there a way to fill in another program's WPF or Windows Forms interface programmatically?

Answer 1

Seems like you're looking for Coded UI Tests, or a tool such as Ranorex or Test Complete. More videos on Coded UI Tests available here. You usually have a possibility to record a scenario for your Windows Forms or WPF application (or even write the code manually), and later run/replay it automatically.

Answer 2

You can either fill in textboxes inte the existion application using a UI test automation tool or you can implement communication in the applications.

For UI test automation tools, see the other answers.

For communications frameworks, you can use one of these:

• Windows Communication Foundation

• ServiceStack

Answer 3

AutoIT is a free scripting language was designed for this. That will let you throw values into an existing UI without making any changes to the application. There are a bunch of UI testing tools out there that could fulfill your needs as well (IE TestComplete), but most aren't free.