Is it possible to capture a Windows pop-up message box from inside a Java program?

Question

I have a Java process that runs on a Windows server where I have to kick off a command line exe. I am using

Process p = Runtime.getRuntime().exec(command);
OutputStream stdin = p.getOutputStream();
InputStreamstderr = p.getErrorStream();
InputStream stdout = p.getInputStream();

to run the process and capture standard in/out streams. The problem I am having is one of the exe's that I have to run will throw a pop-up message box that needs to have "Ok" clicked on before it will finish failing out.
My Java program is running in the background so it does not have a window for the message box to pop up into, meaning when the exe errors the Java program will hang until someone notices it and kills it in Task Manager.

Is there a way to be able to catch or detect these pop-up boxes from Java?

Answer 1

You could be lucky. You could use JNA to call EnumerateWindows or FindWindow of the Win32 API. Then search the button via FindWindowEx.

Then "click" it by calling PostMessage and sending a BM_CLICK

You probably want to have a separate watcher thread that does all this, as your programm waits for the process to end or continue.

Sorry my answer is very rough. Dinner has priority.

Answer 2

No. It's just a process that's running.

Spawning anything that puts up a GUI or any other method of control that cannot be controlled via stdin/out makes little sense.

Answer 3

No, not directly as far as I can tell. However, you can probably do some form of asynchronous notification. For example you can have the particular app post to a topic in a JSM queue which your app could subscribe to. If you do not have the option of going the JMS route, you can use file notification based triggers. You can have the other app create a dummy file in a common directory and you can have your app monitor that directory.

Bottom line is I do not think you can capture a pop up from another process inside your process. So you will need to do some form of external/asynchronous handling to capture it.

Answer 4

An inelegant, but simple solution would be to time out.