WASP

WASP is a PowerShell snapin for Windows Automation tasks like selecting windows and controls and sending mouse and keyboard events. WASP has automation cmdlets like Select-Window, Select-Control, Send-Keys, Send-Click, Get-WindowPosition, Set-WindowPosition, Set-WindowActive, Remove-Window … etc.

Its goal is to enable Windows GUI Automation scripting from inside PowerShell without resorting to specialized scripting tools.

Just to be clear, don't expect any "click to record" functionality … but, do expect to be able to automatically tile windows, send mouse clicks and keystrokes, and in general, automate those tasks that you would normally not be able to do from a console.

How to install

Download from releases, and extract into a PowerShell module directory (e.g., you can try, $env:PSModulePath -split ';' | Select-Object -First 1). Use Get-Module -ListAvailable -Name WASP | Import-Module to make its cmdlets available to the shell. Detailed instructions here: How to install WASP as module in PowerShell

1. Choose your module install path
2. Ensure DLL is in the WASP directory
3. Copy WASP DLL to module path and unblock it
4. Import new module

Some Usage Examples

Author's standard demo:

Open a couple windows

notepad.exe
explorer.exe

list the windows

Select-Window | ft –auto

Activate Notepad

Select-Window notepad* | Set-WindowActive

Close Explorer

Select-Window explorer | Select -First 1 | Remove-WIndow

Run a few more copies of notepad

notepad; notepad; notepad; notepad;

Move them around so we can see them all … (Note the use of foreach with the incrementation)

$i = 1;$t = 100; Select-Window notepad | ForEach { Set-WindowPosition -X 20 -Y (($i++)*$t) -Window $_ }

Put some text into them …

Select-Window notepad | Send-Keys "this is a test"

Close the first notepad window by pressing ALT+F4, and pressing Alt+N

In this case, you don't have to worry about shifting focus to the popup, because it's modal

THE PROBLEM with sending keys like that is:
if there is no confirmation dialog because the file is unchanged, the Alt+N still gets sent

Select-Window notepad | Select -First 1 | Send-Keys "%{F4}%n"

Close the next notepad window …

By asking nicely (Remove-Window) and then hitting "n" for "Don't Save"

If there are no popups, Select-ChldWindow returns nothing, and that's the end of it

Select-Window notepad | Select -First 1 | Remove-Window -Passthru | `
  Select-ChildWindow | Send-Keys "n"

Close the next notepad window the hard way

Just to show off that our "Window" objects have a ProcessID and can be piped to kill

Select-Window notepad | Select -First 1 | kill

A different way to confirm Don't Save (use CLICK instead of keyboard)

Notice how I dive in through several layers of Select-Control to find the button?

This can only work experimentally:

use SPY++, or run the line repeatedly, adding "|Select-Control" until you see the one you want

Select-Window notepad | Select -First 1 | Remove-Window -Passthru | `
  Select-childwindow | select-control| select-control| select-control -title "Do&n't Save" | Send-Click

But now we have the new -Recurse parameter, so it's easy. Just find the window you want and …

Select-Window notepad | Select -First 1 | Remove-Window -Passthru | `
  Select-childwindow | select-control -title "Do&n't Save"  -recurse | Send-Click

Author's favourite use: Re-dock all Visual Studio Tool windows

NOTE: 0, 0 is the resize corner, so you need to specify X,Y coordinates for the click:

Select-Window devenv | Select-ChildWindow | Send-Click 10 10 -Double 

Automation cmdlets

• Select-Window - Pick windows by process name or window caption (with wildcard support)
• Select-ChildWindow - Pick all owned windows of another window (e.g., dialogs, tool windows)
• Select-Control - Pick controls (children) of a specific window, by class and/or name and/or index (with wildcard support) -- NOTE: the "Window" can be specified as "-Window 0" to get all parentless windows, which includes windows, dialogs, tooltips, etc.… With -Window 0 this returns a true superset of the Select-Window output.
• Send-Click - send mouse clicks (any button, with any modifier keys)
• Send-Keys - Windows.Forms.SendKeys lets you send keys … try this: Select-Window notepad | Send-Keys "%(ea)Testing{Enter}{F5}" (and for extra fun, try it with multiple notepad windows open).
• Set-WindowActive - Simply activates the window
• Set-WindowPosition - Set any one of (or all of) top, left, width, height on a window … or maximize/minimize/restore
• Get-WindowPosition - Get the position (kind-of redundant, actually, since the Window object has it's position as a property)
• Remove-Window - Closes the specified window

Wasp Vectors by Vecteezy