How do I get the handle of a console application's window
Solution 1
Not sure it works, but you can try that :
IntPtr handle = Process.GetCurrentProcess().MainWindowHandle;
Solution 2
- The aforementioned
Process.MainWindowHandle
method only works for the process that started the console - The
FindWindowByCaption
method is inherently unreliable
Here's a robust way to do this:
The related functions from the Console Win32 API are:
[DllImport("kernel32.dll", SetLastError = true)]
static extern bool AttachConsole(uint dwProcessId);
[DllImport("kernel32.dll")]
static extern IntPtr GetConsoleWindow();
[DllImport("kernel32.dll", SetLastError=true, ExactSpelling=true)]
static extern bool FreeConsole();
- For the console the current process is attached to, just
GetConsoleWindow()
is enough - For the console another process is attached to, attach to it as well with
AttachConsole
, callGetConsoleWindow
, them immediately detach withFreeConsole
.
For the extra cautious, register a console event handler before attaching (and unregister it after detaching) as well so you don't accidentally get terminated if a console event happens in the tiny time frame you're attached to the console:
[DllImport("kernel32.dll")]
static extern bool SetConsoleCtrlHandler(ConsoleCtrlDelegate HandlerRoutine,
bool Add);
delegate Boolean ConsoleCtrlDelegate(CtrlTypes CtrlType);
enum CtrlTypes : uint {
CTRL_C_EVENT = 0,
CTRL_BREAK_EVENT,
CTRL_CLOSE_EVENT,
CTRL_LOGOFF_EVENT = 5,
CTRL_SHUTDOWN_EVENT
}
bool is_attached=false;
ConsoleCtrlDelegate ConsoleCtrlDelegateDetach = delegate(CtrlType) {
if (is_attached = !FreeConsole())
Trace.Error('FreeConsole on ' + CtrlType + ': ' + new Win32Exception());
return true;
};
Making changes to the current process just to read something is rather ugly (when this is a console process, this gets really ugly since it requires a helper process to avoid terminating the current console). Nevertheless, further investigation shows that there's no other way short of injecting into the csrss
process or the target process.
Console correspondence information is located in and managed by csrss.exe
(or a multitude of those, one for each session, since Vista), so it can't be retrieved with the likes of ReadProcessMemory
. All that csrss
exposes is the CSRSS LPC API. There's only one relevant function in the full API list, SrvGetConsoleWindow
. And it doesn't accept a PID but determines that of the calling party as seen in an alternative implementation or the function's disassembly in winsrv.dll
.
Solution 3
Try this:
[DllImport("user32.dll", EntryPoint = "FindWindow", SetLastError = true)]
public static extern IntPtr FindWindowByCaption(IntPtr zeroOnly, string lpWindowName);
…
Console.Title = "Test";
…
IntPtr handle = FindWindowByCaption(IntPtr.Zero, Console.Title);
Solution 4
I've just solved this problem for myself (unfortunately before seeing Thomas's answer which is much quicker). Well, here's another way for those who are not satisfied with his answer. I'm writing this answer because I want to provide another answer + a better way to design the Program
class if you're treating your console as a Window. Let's begin with that design:
I've kind of changed the default style of the Program
class. I've actually made it into a class that has a program in it, and not just one method which represent it and uses other classes for content. (If you don't know what I mean, not important).
The reason I had to do it is because I wanted to write the following event handler:
private void CatchUnhandled(Object sender, UnhandledExceptionEventArgs e)
{
var exception = e.ExceptionObject as Exception;
MessageBox.Show(this, exception.Message, "Error"); // Check out 1st arg.
}
It overloads this method MessageBox.Show(IWin32Window, String, String)
.
Because Console doesn't implement IWin32Window
, I had to implement it myself, of course, in order to just call this
in the 1st argument.
Here is the implementation of it and everything else:
Note: this code is copy-pasted from my application, you can feel free to change the access modifiers
Program
Class Declaration:
internal class Program : IWin32Window
{
...
}
IWin32Window
Implementation:
public IntPtr Handle
{
get { return NativeMethods.GetConsoleWindow(); }
}
It uses the following class:
internal static class NativeMethods
{
[DllImport("kernel32.dll")]
internal static extern IntPtr GetConsoleWindow();
}
Now, the problem is that you can't actually call this
in Main
, being a static method, so whatever was in Main
I've moved to a new method named Start
and all Main
is doing is creating a new Program
and calling Start
.
private static void Main()
{
new Program().Start();
}
private void Start()
{
AppDomain.CurrentDomain.UnhandledException += CatchUnhandled;
throw new Exception();
}
The result was, of course, a message-box with my console's window as an owner.
Using this method for a message-box, is of course only one application of this method.
Solution 5
I don't think there is such a thing. The console window is not accessible to the application. You MIGHT try to iterate the process list looking for your own process name. The Process
class IIRC contains a property for the program's main window handle, which might be the console window for console applications - which I'm not sure of.
Grant
Updated on July 09, 2022Comments
-
Grant over 1 year
Can someone tell me how to get the handle of a Windows console application in C#? In a Windows Forms application, I would normally try
this.Handle
. -
Thomas Levesque over 14 years"iterate the process list looking for your own process name" => not a very efficient approach... you could find it by the PID, or use } ;)
-
Thorsten Dittmar over 14 yearsWhoops - Thomas Levesque's answer is even more elegant. While relying on the same property, he doesn't need to iterate. I forgot that you can access to current process directly...
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Thorsten Dittmar over 14 years@Thomas: Sorry, didn't see your comment before. Of course, iterating is far more inefficient. I didn't remember the GetCurrentProcess() method...
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Piers Karsenbarg over 12 yearsFor anyone else looking 2-22 years later; yes, this did work (for me).
-
John Gardner over 12 yearsthis appears to only work if your process started the console. if you run it from another console, you always get zero. it looks like you need to use findwindowbycaption in other situations (see support.microsoft.com/kb/124103)
-
Carl Walsh over 10 yearsThis worked for me when debugging in Visual Studio, but when I ran without debugging it didn't. Double clocking the myProgram.exe in bin/Release did work, but
FindWindowByCaption
might be the more robust solution. -
tetrahydrocannon over 10 yearsIn short the answer is: [DllImport("kernel32.dll")] internal static extern IntPtr GetConsoleWindow();
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Bitterblue over 10 yearsEarlier I always had much respect for this window and I never though I could manipulate it via code but it is a simple window that is not much different than others. The line above works and you can also enumerate and find it via WinApi and do all kinds of crazy stuff to it. Just be careful it has a
WndProc
that makes it resize a little differently. -
James Johnston over 8 yearsThis should be the accepted answer. GetConsoleWindow is the right way to do this; many of the other answers here are just plain goofy.
-
WiredEarp over 7 yearsThis is the correct answer IMHO, unless you want to spend time figuring out why your application doesn't work when you run it from the console as opposed to the IDE. Thanks Ivan.