Sending a mouse message to the desktop?

Hi,

I want my program to send mouse clicks to whatever the mouse is currently pointing to. I thought this could be accomplished by sending the appropriate mouse message to the desktop window, so I came up with this:

HWND lpDesktopWindow = ::GetDesktopWindow();

::SendMessage(lpDesktopWindow, WM_LBUTTONDOWN, 0, 0);

Unfortunately this doesn't seem to have any effect. Is it not working because I am passing 0 in place of the mouse coordinates? If this is the reason, how can I get the mouse coordinates? I can't monitor WM_MOUSEMOVE because the mouse isn't moving over my application. If the desktop gets the message with the proper coordinates will it then send the message to the application that the mouse is pointing to?

jakar

Code:

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POINT ptWhereTheMouseIs;
GetCursorPos(&ptWhereTheMouseIs);
HWND hDeskTop=GetDesktopWindow();
SendMessage(hDeskTop,WM_LBUTTONDOWN, ptWhereTheMouseIs.x, ptWhereTheMouseIs.y);

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It's probably a good idea to rename the POINT variable. Note that GetCursorPos returns the screen coords which is fine for the desktop. If you need client coords from that then look into ScreenToClient (and also ClientToScreen) to convert.

Hope that helps.

This looks like what I need. I had read in another post that 'GetCursorPos' wasn't the mouse position. I just found some documentation in MSDN saying that it is, so thanks for pointing back in the right direction there.

SendMessage(hWnd, WM_LBUTTONDOWN, 0, lParam);

This is the call I need to make. The last two 0s weren't the coordinates, just the last one. Now that I have the x and y values, how do I combine then into a double word? lParam is a double word, x is a word, and y is a word. The hi word of lParam is x, and the lo word of lParam is y, but how do I fill lParam. NOTE: I may be getting the hi and lo values of lParam mixed up, but that doesn't matter as long as I know how to combine them to make a DWORD.

oops...sorry about that but i'm glad you have something that works for you.

OK, this seems to work, except you have to point to the client area. This means no pointing to the menu bar; min, max, close buttons; etc. Thanks

POINT lMousePointer;

GetCursorPos(&lMousePointer);

HWND lpTargetWindow = ::WindowFromPoint(lMousePointer);

::ScreenToClient(lpTargetWindow, &lMousePointer);

DWORD lMouseX;
DWORD lMouseY;

lMouseX = (DWORD)lMousePointer.x;
lMouseY = (((DWORD)lMousePointer.y) << 16);

LPARAM lParam;

lParam = lMouseX + lMouseY;

::SendMessage(lpTargetWindow, WM_LBUTTONDOWN, 0, lParam);
::SendMessage(lpTargetWindow, WM_LBUTTONUP, 0, lParam);

I think you might want to replace:

Code:

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lParam = lMouseX + lMouseY;

---

with

Code:

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lParam = MAKELPARAM(lMouseX , lMouseY);

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Thanks again. I traced MAKELPARAM back to MAKELONG to see what it was doing. I didn't even think of doing an OR rather than adding. I don't think (my thinking is often wrong) it will make a functional difference, but it is a better way of doing it.