Can a VB.NET app control another app?

[Nepenthe79]

I found an Freeware OCR Java application that I want to launch (found this link ), but once it's launched I need to tell it to "click" a Load Image button. That button then opens a standard Windows browse for file window, and I need to input the right path, select file and click open. Then I need to "click" Decode Image, and exit. Can VB do this? Can anyone point me in the right direction? Am I going to have to create a WMI script and launch that?

Please help,

Adam

[waterjock2000]

You can do this with a series of SendKeys commands. This won't be a 100% reliable - if the user clicks on another application or the OCR program throws any errors, you probably won't be able to recover. Have you looked at any OCR components for .NET?

[Nepenthe79]

I haven't looked at any of the OCR components of VB.NET, but the program I found is designed to decode a PDF417 2D Barcode (specifically Driver's Licenses) and out put the data into plain text/Hex. Is their an easy way to do that in VB.NET? Also, I tried the SendKeys command, but it's not working because keyboard input to the java program has no effect. It actually requires a mouse click. Any thoughts?

[waterjock2000]

Ahh - you'll need something like this:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/de.../sendinput.asp

It's an API call, but is easy enough to use. Here's some additional info on how to use that call with .NET:
http://www.pinvoke.net/default.aspx/user32.SendInput

[Nepenthe79]

I'll play around with those, thanks a lot!