How to find window handle of object with focus (caret) in external application

[Galaxea]

I am navigating an external application with UIAutomation, but this can only get me so far.
Some objects don't appear or are not accessible until the mouse clicks on them or they are TABBED to, and I am using SendKeys to TAB to them.

I now need to get the window handle of the element that has the edit caret.
I can't find any examples of this, well not any in anything like VBA.
Please point me to some examples. Thanks.

 

[Dan_W]

Is this query related to your other thread? I've been following that thread when I've had some time - I find I always learn something new from John and Jaafar's replies. I see from the past correspondence that you've come across/are aware of FindWindowEx - this is how you would normally go about getting the handle of an Edit control (classname 'Edit') in an external application. Does that not work in this scenario? You may have already be aware of it, but John_w has published in this site a very useful tool that enumerates through window handles with the EnumChildWindows API - link. Does this manage to capture the handle?

 

[Jaafar Tribak]

Assuming the object has a hwnd , you could probably use GetCaretPos then WindowFromPoint.
You may need to first convert the caret position returned by GetCaretPos in the lpPoint parameter to screen coordinates with ClientToScreen before calling WindowFromPoint.

Also, if the object has no hwnd but the external application implements Active Accessibility, you can use the AccFocus method which retrieves the object that has the keyboard (caret). Once you have a pointer to the accessible object, you can for example, use the DoDefaultAction method to perform the object's default action. (if that is what you want)