How to find activewindow in window service application

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HI,
I am creating a window service application in which I have to findout out which is current active window(which have keyboard focus).I have done like this but this is returning null values always.

[DllImport("user32.dll")]
        static extern IntPtr GetForegroundWindow();

const int nChars = 256;
            IntPtr handle = IntPtr.Zero;
            StringBuilder Buff = new StringBuilder(nChars);
            handle = GetForegroundWindow();
            if (GetWindowText(handle, Buff, nChars) > 0)
            {
                Log.WriteLine(Buff.ToString());
                return Buff.ToString();
            }
            Log.WriteLine("Returning  Null");
            return null;

But I have tried Same logic in console application but its working fine in that.Is there any other way to findout out active window in window service?
Kindly help me out.

Regards,
Manushi

Posted 13-Apr-11 3:53am

manushi88

Updated 13-Apr-11 22:00pm

v4

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Nish Nishant · Answer 1 · 2011-04-13T04:11:00

Solution 1

From Vista onwards, services cannot interact with the UI. So calls like GetForegroundWindow will not work. This is by design.

The workaround is to have a stub client application that calls GetForegroundWindow and communicates with the service. For any UI function, the service proxies through the stub client.

Posted 13-Apr-11 4:11am

Nish Nishant

v2

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manushi88 13-Apr-11 13:50pm

Hi Nishant,
Thanks for helping.I am new to window service.Can you please help me out with the concept of stub client.
Regards,
Manushi