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What is the best way to control a program's user interface (clicking, entering text, drop down selection, etc) when the program has no available API?

I've heard of AutoHotKey and FlaUI and watched a few videos but haven't seen a great example yet. Before I go too far, is this the best direction/method?

Thanks!

Retsied
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  • Without an API that's all there is. Use software (AutoHotKey, etc.) to simulate UI events. – Ouroborus Jun 18 '22 at 07:28
  • (1) Autohotkey is quick and easy. (2) Or you can set up virtual machines and programmatically trigger UIs with the VM's API. (3) There is even these 'rogue' usb devices that mimic series of mouse or keyboard events without actual human inputs. It's hard to say which is best; each has it's own usage scenario. – X Zhang Jun 19 '22 at 00:48
  • @Retsied. Since you are unfamiliar with both, then your available user base would determine how much help you will be able to get in debugging anything you do write. AHK has thousands of questions on this site and FlaUI has dozens. But that is my advice. – T_Lube Jun 28 '22 at 07:04

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FlaUI is a fully fledged UI Testing library that allows you to automate all aspects of a Windows application. As author of it, I of course recommend it. If you do have a bit of programming know how, it should be fairly easy to use. In case you just want some scripts to run locally, you don't even need Visual Studio or Visual Studio code, you can just use RoslynPad for example and directly create and run your code there. I use this all the time for small automations, heck even sometimes to input very long passwords in a remote machine where I cannot use copy/paste.

Roemer
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