Thanks to cubrr for the help, his idea worked with some extension from my part. First of all, I have to find out the Title of the webpage that will be displayed within the browser. After this I have to use EnumWindows to find the newly opened browser window, and call SetForegroundWindow on it.
My solution is based on these other sources:
How to use EnumWindows to find a certain window by partial title.
Get the title from a webpage.
Bring to forward window when minimized
The solution suggested by cubrr, using FindWindow (you have to know the exact window title to be able to use this):
[DllImport("USER32.DLL", CharSet = CharSet.Unicode)]
public static extern IntPtr FindWindow(String lpClassName, String lpWindowName);
[DllImport("USER32.DLL")]
public static extern bool SetForegroundWindow(IntPtr hWnd);
[DllImport("user32.dll")]
public static extern bool IsIconic(IntPtr handle);
[DllImport("user32.dll")]
public static extern bool ShowWindow(IntPtr handle, int nCmdShow);
void Main()
{
const int SW_RESTORE = 9;
var hWnd = FindWindow(null, "Google - Google Chrome");
if (IsIconic(hWnd))
ShowWindow(hWnd, SW_RESTORE);
SetForegroundWindow(hWnd);
}
Here is the final code I ended up using:
public class MyClass
{
private const int SW_RESTORE = 9;
[DllImport("User32.dll")]
private static extern bool SetForegroundWindow(IntPtr hWnd);
[DllImport("user32.dll", SetLastError = true)]
private static extern bool BringWindowToTop(IntPtr hWnd);
[DllImport("USER32.DLL", CharSet = CharSet.Unicode)]
private static extern IntPtr FindWindow(String lpClassName, String lpWindowName);
[DllImport("user32.dll")]
private static extern bool IsIconic(IntPtr handle);
[DllImport("user32.dll")]
private static extern bool ShowWindow(IntPtr handle, int nCmdShow);
[DllImport("user32.dll", CharSet = CharSet.Unicode)]
private static extern int GetWindowText(IntPtr hWnd, StringBuilder strText, int maxCount);
[DllImport("user32.dll", CharSet = CharSet.Unicode)]
private static extern int GetWindowTextLength(IntPtr hWnd);
[DllImport("user32.dll")]
private static extern bool EnumWindows(EnumWindowsProc enumProc, IntPtr lParam);
private delegate bool EnumWindowsProc(IntPtr hWnd, IntPtr lParam);
public static string GetWebPageTitle(string url)
{
// Create a request to the url
HttpWebRequest request = HttpWebRequest.Create(url) as HttpWebRequest;
// If the request wasn't an HTTP request (like a file), ignore it
if (request == null) return null;
// Use the user's credentials
request.UseDefaultCredentials = true;
// Obtain a response from the server, if there was an error, return nothing
HttpWebResponse response = null;
try { response = request.GetResponse() as HttpWebResponse; }
catch (WebException) { return null; }
// Regular expression for an HTML title
string regex = @"(?<=<title.*>)([\s\S]*)(?=</title>)";
// If the correct HTML header exists for HTML text, continue
if (new List<string>(response.Headers.AllKeys).Contains("Content-Type"))
if (response.Headers["Content-Type"].StartsWith("text/html"))
{
// Download the page
WebClient web = new WebClient();
web.UseDefaultCredentials = true;
string page = web.DownloadString(url);
// Extract the title
Regex ex = new Regex(regex, RegexOptions.IgnoreCase);
return ex.Match(page).Value.Trim();
}
// Not a valid HTML page
return null;
}
public static void BringToFront(string title)
{
try
{
if (!String.IsNullOrEmpty(title))
{
IEnumerable<IntPtr> listPtr = null;
// Wait until the browser is started - it may take some time
// Maximum wait is (200 + some) * 100 milliseconds > 20 seconds
int retryCount = 100;
do
{
listPtr = FindWindowsWithText(title);
if (listPtr == null || listPtr.Count() == 0)
{
Thread.Sleep(200);
}
} while (--retryCount > 0 || listPtr == null || listPtr.Count() == 0);
if (listPtr == null)
return;
foreach (var hWnd in listPtr)
{
if (IsIconic(hWnd))
ShowWindow(hWnd, SW_RESTORE);
SetForegroundWindow(hWnd);
}
}
}
catch (Exception)
{
// If it fails at least we tried
}
}
public static string GetWindowText(IntPtr hWnd)
{
int size = GetWindowTextLength(hWnd);
if (size++ > 0)
{
var builder = new StringBuilder(size);
GetWindowText(hWnd, builder, builder.Capacity);
return builder.ToString();
}
return String.Empty;
}
public static IEnumerable<IntPtr> FindWindowsWithText(string titleText)
{
IntPtr found = IntPtr.Zero;
List<IntPtr> windows = new List<IntPtr>();
EnumWindows(delegate(IntPtr wnd, IntPtr param)
{
if (GetWindowText(wnd).Contains(titleText))
{
windows.Add(wnd);
}
return true;
}, IntPtr.Zero);
return windows;
}
[STAThread]
public static int Main(string[] args)
{
try
{
if (args.Count() == 0)
return 0;
// ...
// Wait until the user's desktop is inactive (outside the scope of this solution)
// ...
String url = args[0];
System.Diagnostics.Process process = new System.Diagnostics.Process();
System.Diagnostics.ProcessStartInfo startInfo = new System.Diagnostics.ProcessStartInfo();
startInfo.WindowStyle = System.Diagnostics.ProcessWindowStyle.Hidden;
startInfo.FileName = "cmd.exe";
// ...
// Get the path to the default browser from registry, and create a StartupInfo object with it.
// ...
process.StartInfo = startInfo;
process.Start();
try
{
process.WaitForInputIdle();
}
catch (InvalidOperationException)
{
// if the process exited then it passed the URL on to the other browser process.
}
String title = GetWebPageTitle(url);
if (!String.IsNullOrEmpty(title))
{
BringToFront(title);
}
return 0;
}
catch (System.Exception ex)
{
return -1;
}
}
}
