on 2008-04-14 8:30 AM, Don Arnel at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > I am attempting to write a Cocoa app that I would > like to have "hook" into a text chat window from another app so that I > can log the incoming messages. The other app does not belong to my app. > > If anyone could point me to some help topics on how this can be > accomplished I would greatly appreciate it.
Use the Accessibility API. It's designed to do exactly this. It's a C API, not Cocoa or Objective-C, but you can use it in a Cocoa application. The Accessibility API does two things: (1) it enables you to make the user controls and views in your application accessible to so-called "assistive applications," and (2) it enables you to write an "assistive application" yourself that accesses the user controls and views of any application. The Accessibility API was created to make applications accessible to people with disabilities through assistive devices and applications. However, the Accessibility API is also wonderfully useful for doing lots of other things, such as hooking into a text chat window so that you can log the incoming messages. Apple has lots of documentation about how to make your own application's user controls and views accessible by assistive applications, but that usually is only necessary if your application has custom user controls and views. If your application uses standard Carbon or Cocoa code for its user controls and views, they are automatically accessible out of the box. But Apple offers very little documentation about how to write an assistive application, which is what you want to do. There is a reference document that describes the functions in the Accessibility API that you have to use to write an assistive application, and there are a couple of example code projects, including the UI Element Inspector example. You can download the free 30-day trial version of my PreFab UI Browser at <http://prefabsoftware.com/uibrowser/>, which uses the Accessibility API to read and manipulate other applications. Try it with your target application's chat window to see whether UI Browser is able to read the incoming messages. You might have to read the chat window periodically to notice new messages, but more likely your assistive application can install (or register) a notification observer that will notice every time the content of the chat window changes. You can test that in UI Browser, too. In your "assistive" application, you would respond to each such notification by reading the new content of the chat window and saving it to your log. -- Bill Cheeseman - [EMAIL PROTECTED] Quechee Software, Quechee, Vermont, USA www.quecheesoftware.com PreFab Software - www.prefabsoftware.com _______________________________________________ Cocoa-dev mailing list (Cocoa-dev@lists.apple.com) Please do not post admin requests or moderator comments to the list. Contact the moderators at cocoa-dev-admins(at)lists.apple.com Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: http://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/cocoa-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com This email sent to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
