Host a process window inside your applications window
The following snippet will allow you to host the window of any application inside your own application. This isn’t a recommended practice but it’s a fun method that might spawn some interesting ideas.
In order to get this working we will need to pinvoke two Win32 functions, SetParent and SetWindowPos.
Place the following lines in your class
1 2 3 4 | [DllImport("user32.dll", SetLastError = true)] private static extern IntPtr SetParent(IntPtr hWndChild, IntPtr hWndNewParent); [DllImport("user32.dll", EntryPoint = "SetWindowPos")] public static extern IntPtr SetWindowPos(IntPtr hWnd, int hWndInsertAfter, int x, int Y, int cx, int cy, int wFlags); |
Now add our LoadApplication method which takes a string and an IntPtr value as an argument and will attempt to run the application and set our argument handle value as its parent.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 | private void LoadApplication(string path, IntPtr handle) { Stopwatch sw = new Stopwatch(); sw.Start(); int timeout = 10 * 1000; // Timeout value (10s) in case we want to cancel the task if it's taking too long. Process p = Process.Start(path); while (p.MainWindowHandle == IntPtr.Zero) { System.Threading.Thread.Sleep(10); p.Refresh(); if (sw.ElapsedMilliseconds > timeout) { sw.Stop(); return; } } SetParent(p.MainWindowHandle, handle); // Set the process parent window to the window we want SetWindowPos(p.MainWindowHandle, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0x0001 | 0x0040); // Place the window in the top left of the parent window without resizing it } |
And we are done! Now just call our LoadApplication method with the file you want its window to be in your application
1 2 3 | LoadApplication(@"c:\windows\system32\notepad.exe", this.Handle); LoadApplication(@"c:\windows\system32\calc", this.Handle); LoadApplication(@"c:\windows\system32\calc", this.Handle); |
The end result will be something like this
I have developed an app using MS Word (VSTO Addin) and has a child windows form inside the app. first MS Word Application gets launched and then the form. I want to set MS Word inside this form. I tried the same method as you mentioned but it did not worked.
I do not want to create a windows form as a separate application and also cannot change the loading sequence in my App.
Kindly help
Is there a way to do this while limiting the application within a grid or stackpanel? I’d like the external application to be docked within a grid I have on a specific tab in my application.
How do you reverse this now? I am able to do the above but now need to be able to reverse it.
@mike, simply put a null parent with setParent