More info on click event in VB

Question

I would like to create a bot that repeats the same action many times. Is there any way I can get more info about a click event. Lets say I click somewhere on the opened file explorer window. Can the program tell that I clicked on a specific area or button in that window? Can I make the program click or type on a specific(opened) window? Thanks

Answer 1

Yes the program can tell when you click on a specific button. Whatever button it is that you clicked on will have its click event fired, if it exists. In order to manually tell the program to perform this action, you can implement the phrase..

btn.PerformClick()

where "btn" is the name of whatever button you are needing to click. Whenever this phrase is called, the btn_Click event handler will be fired just the same as if you yourself actually clicked the button.

To do the same thing with an actual window or form in your program is trickier because there are no built in methods you can call to trigger a windows form click event. But it is possible. The code that will define a window's event handler and trigger it will be..

Private Sub myWindow_Click() Handles MyBase.Click
    'code you want to run on click event here
End Sub

myWindow_Click() 'where you want the click to be triggered

The above would be much simpler to simulate in a method call however.

And lastly to simulate the typing of text into a window, you could simply access the text property of the control you are wanting to alter, and then change that text property to the desired text. But judging from your question, you are wanting this to be done in a similar fashion to how a human would. This can also be accomplished with some work, using a timer interval that appends to the text of the control.

Lets say for example, you wanted "hello world" to be typed into a text box on screen as a person would. Add a timer control to your form and set its interval to 250 or however fast you want the word to be type and in a method..

Dim str as String = ""
Dim pos as Integer = 0

Public Sub humanType(word as String)     
    str = word
    Timer1.enabled = true
End Sub

public Sub Timer1_Tick(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles Timer1.Tick
    myTextBox.Text = myTextBox.Text + str[pos]
    pos = pos + 1
    If pos = str.length Then
        Timer1.enabled = false
    End If  
End Sub

If you have never worked with timer intervals before, this tutorial has some good info on them for VB.Net. http://www.techrepublic.com/article/perform-actions-at-set-intervals-with-vbnets-timer-control/

Hope it helps!