How can I cause a textbox to automatically enter when data is sent to it?

Question

Hello Everyone,

I have a C# windows application that uses a wedge scanner to input data in the textbox on the form. When I scan an 'Employee Number' for example I want it to automatically 'Enter' instead of me pressing the Enter key on the keyboard.

When I scan now the data gets sent to the textbox, but it just sits there waiting for me to press enter.

Can this be done?

thank you

Answer 1

Not sure where your post has gone on this but, if you need to control the 3rd party application depending on the selection of some specification on the form, then the easiest way to do it would be to pass the application command line arguments if it's been written to accept them.

You can pass the arguments in the Process.Start method. For example:

   string arguments = "1 abc"; // separate arguments by spaces

   System.Diagnostics.Process.Start("someapp.exe", arguments);

If  the application doesn't accept command line arguments, then you might be able to use SendKeys.Send to send it some keystrokes - for example to open a menu and select an option. This isn't as easy as it sounds since there may be synchronization difficulties and you may need to build in delays between sending the keystrokes to overcome these. Check out the MSDN docs here:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.windows.forms.sendkeys.send.aspx 

Answer 2

Well, what's usually done is to put a button on the form, which when pressed, launches the external application:

private button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)

{

   System.Diagnostics.Process.Start("someapp.exe");

}

If you wanted the form to display and then the external application to launch automatically, you could do it by handling the form's Shown event:

private void Form1_Shown(object sender, EventArgs e)

{

   System.Diagnostics.Process.Start("someapp.exe");

}