Accessing another program? 2

[rstum2005]

I have automated a program we use at work (program "A" we will call this) but if this program fails I want to make sure the next functions in my program (program "B") do not run. In program "A" there is a textbox that will display some words along with either the word "Finished" or "Error". Is there a way to view and run a test condition on this field using program "B". I am not sure how to read from the field in program "A".

Kind of confusing but I hope you will understand.

Thanks for any replies.

 

[JurkMonkey]

Look into System.Reflection and also Process() in C#. You will find some cool stuff!

 

[rstum2005]

I looked into these. I am still having problems. I need to find out if this program finishes before I run another process. Here is one of the links I read into but im still stuck.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/d...n/html/vbtskconnectingtoexistingprocesses.asp

I plan on doing somthing like this....

if(myProcess.)
	{
	richTextBox1.AppendText("Program is Finished"+'\n');
	}
	else
	{
	richTextBox1.AppendText("Program Ended with Errors"+'\n');
	return;
	}

Thank you,

 

[tgreer]

You haven't said if Program A is a C# program or not. I run/write a lot of console applications. Make them generate a "return" value and they'll create a "DOS" errorlevel. This can be retrieved by another C# program by reading the environment variable.

If Program A is NOT a C# application, it's even more likely that it'll create an errorlevel.



Thomas D. Greer

http://www.tgreer.com

 

[tgreer]

Sorry, I was off-base. I didn't read the entire thread. Your first post says there is a "textbox", so it isn't a Console app.

Program A doesn't sound well-structured. It finishes by writing "FINISHED" to a textbox? Why not just finish??

Thomas D. Greer

http://www.tgreer.com

 

[JurkMonkey]

It's true.

Your program should be in charge of launching the other apps as needed. Run each app as a Process() with the appropriate events and when one completes successfully, launch the next one. Your design seems to be overly complicated when it should really be quite simple.

 

[rstum2005]

I cannot look at an exit code for their program since the program does not exit once its finished. Ive got thier program automated by my program, I just need my program to stop if their program finishes with errors, does not finish, or does not even start. A text box in thier program either says "no errors" on startup, "processing" when it is running and "finished" if it has completed. What id like to do is write a loop to check to see if their program says "Finished" and when it does, complete the rest of the tasks my program wants to complete. If it says somthing other than "Processing" or "Finished" in the box Id like my program to Return;

 

[tgreer]

I'm afraid you're in a bit of a bind. If you're dealing with a 3rd party, poorly-written app that doesn't return/set an %ERRORLEVEL% or other environment variable, then there isn't much you can do. Perhaps there is some screen-scrape method, or a way of looking at the OS messages to tell when it's sending a particular value to a particular window/control?





Thomas D. Greer

http://www.tgreer.com

 

[tgreer]

This article might help with the messaging, if you choose that route:

http://dotnet.sys-con.com/read/39039.htm

Thomas D. Greer

http://www.tgreer.com

 

[rstum2005]

I got it. They have a template which they modified so it updates a table in a field called "error". If the table has been updated this means thier program has run and it places something in each records error field. Now i can write a loop to check the table for null error count = 0 for this means it has been updated and I can now run the next process.

 

[rstum2005]

Thanks everyone for the help.

Does this mean I get a star since I got it working?