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XYplorer and inter-process communication (IPC)

Posted: 27 Sep 2013 17:08
by Marco
XY can do a lot of things (coffee too) but certain tasks require third party utilities that need to communicate their results back to XY.
Using a text file as intermediate step is a classic, but it's not that elegant.
The recent addition of copydata is neat, but can't be used always. More specifically, it's great for communication between two XYs and from XY to other programs, but not the other way around. In fact, you need to use a language which can send a WM_COPYDATA message.
So my question is: besides C, C++, Autoit and some others, is there a way to send a WM_COPYDATA message to XY using only the means provided by a fresh Windows install?

Re: XYplorer and inter-process communication (IPC)

Posted: 27 Sep 2013 17:17
by admin
Just curious: What kind of message is on your mind?

Re: XYplorer and inter-process communication (IPC)

Posted: 27 Sep 2013 17:23
by Marco
For example, in my updating script i rely on a couple of vbs files that do something and then write little text files which are then read by XY. If VBScript supported WM_COPYDATA I could use that, but afaics it doesn't.

Re: XYplorer and inter-process communication (IPC)

Posted: 27 Sep 2013 17:32
by TheQwerty
Well you can use .NET to access SendMessage in USER32.dll, which means with a little work you should be able to do the same in PowerShell.

I wouldn't be surprised if you can do something similar with VBScript.

Re: XYplorer and inter-process communication (IPC)

Posted: 27 Sep 2013 17:38
by Marco
Thanks for the suggestion, I'll try searching more about SendMessage and User32.dll
I probably have overlooked something important during my first searches with big G.

Re: XYplorer and inter-process communication (IPC)

Posted: 27 Sep 2013 19:08
by Marco
Nope, looks like I have to make the big jump to C++.