Make Autohotkey ignore any special characters in string - string

Question

We're using a parser program (which I have no access to) that parses a bunch of computer generated mails but needs some help to decide on what it has to do in particular. Because of that, an employee kann use the subject line for additional commands. Since there are more than 500 mails per day that we feed to the program and the commands do all look similar to that: Ba,Vi;#TD*; x0003, it's impossible to write them manually. So I wrote a small C# script that creates an Autohotkey script which does 90% of the work. In theory. It works but only as long as I don't use any special characters, like , : & % etc.
I tried:
clipboard := Ba{,}Vi{;}{#}TD{*}{;} x0003
clipboard := "Ba,Vi;#TD*; x0003"
clipboard := Ba',Vi';'#TD'*'; x0003
clipboard := {raw} Ba,Vi;#TD*; x0003
(plus some others that I probably forgot here)
Here's the entire AHK script with annotations. You start it while having an email selected in Outlook:
;Win+z -> start script
#z::
;Currently only one iteration
loop,1
{
;CTRL+F to forward selected mail,
;which then automatically selects the "To:" line
Send, {CTRLDOWN}f{CTRUP}
Sleep, 500
Send, someemail#adress
Sleep, 500
;Initialize GUI
Gui, +AlwaysOnTop
Gui, Font, S5, Verdana, bold
Gui, Add, Text,, SCANNING-BOOSTER:
Gui, Color, F4A460
;Example for the C# generated buttons below (they all do the same thing):
;Clicking the Button "Google" will run the following script
;Start:
;clipboard := www.Google.com
;return
;This is the part where AHK fails because instead
;of www.Google.com I have codes like "Ba,Vi;#TD*; x0003" which crash AHK
Gui,add,Button,gLabel,Google
Gui,add,Button, ......
Gui,add,Button, ......
Gui,add,Button, ......
Gui,add,Button, ......
Gui,add,Button, ......
..... (around 60 more auto-generated buttons)
Gui,show
Return
Label:
;run the script that has the same name as the Button
;in this case it would be Google.ahk
Run, % A_GuiControl ".ahk"
GuiClose:
Gui, Hide
Sleep, 1000
;after the user has pressed a button and the according code
;has been copied to the clipboard, the GUI closes, the
;mail window becomes active again and we can continue to paste
;the code into the subject line
;Go to subject line
Send, {ALTDOWN}r{ALTUP}
Sleep, 500
;CTRL+a
Send, {CTRLDOWN}a{CTRUP}
Sleep, 500
;Write text from your clipboard to the subject line
Send, %clipboard%
Sleep, 500
return
}

Answer 1

Apparently it's currently not possible to copy a (more or less) random string to your clipboard in Autohotkey and then paste it somewhere else without receiving so many errors that it's worth pursuing it. I was left with no choice other than programming everything myself in C#. Here's how I did it:
First, start a new Console Application and then change it to a Windows Application How to change a console application to a windows form application?
This is the easiest way to make a program completely invisible to the user.
Next, we need a key listener. Here's the one I used: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/toub/2006/05/03/low-level-keyboard-hook-in-c/
I would advise you to put it in a new class. This code needs to be slightly altered anyway because it prints every key press to the console. We don't want that, we want to call a method from it. Change HookCallback to:
private static IntPtr HookCallback(int nCode, IntPtr wParam, IntPtr lParam)
{
if (nCode >= 0 && wParam == (IntPtr)WM_KEYDOWN)
{
int vkCode = Marshal.ReadInt32(lParam);
if (KeyPressed == vkCode)
DoWork();
}
return CallNextHookEx(_HookID, nCode, wParam, lParam);
}
For the code above to work, we need to add a new delegate and a new int variable to our class:
private static int KeyPressed;
public delegate void SomethingToDo();
private static SomethingToDo DoWork;
SetHook also needs some minor alterations:
private static IntPtr SetHook(KeyboardProc _proc, int KeyCode, SomethingToDo GiveMeWork)
{
DoWork = GiveMeWork;
KeyPressed = KeyCode;
...(leave the rest as it is)...
}
The program is now completely invisible and can react to a key press. Let's do the opposite, simulating keys!
Ctrl key kept down after simulating a ctrl key down event and ctrl key up event
This is a lot simpler. I made three methods, PressKey, ReleaseKey and TapKey. Keep in mind that ALT and F10 are special system keys which might not work.
[DllImport("user32.dll", SetLastError = true)]
static extern void keybd_event(byte bVk, byte bScan, int dwFlags, int dwExtraInfo);
private const int KeyPressCode = 0x0001;
private const int KeyReleaseCode = 0x0002;
public static void PressKey(System.Windows.Forms.Keys Key)
{
keybd_event((byte)Key, 0, KeyPressCode | 0, 0);
Thread.Sleep(10);
}
public static void ReleaseKey(System.Windows.Forms.Keys Key)
{
keybd_event((byte)Key, 0, KeyPressCode | KeyReleaseCode, 0);
Thread.Sleep(10);
}
public static void TapKey(System.Windows.Forms.Keys Key)
{
PressKey(Key);
ReleaseKey(Key);
}
That's it, a basic Autohokey-Clone that can cope with strings. If you want to go even further and make a try icon for it:
https://translate.google.de/translate?sl=de&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=de&ie=UTF-8&u=https%3A%2F%2Fdotnet-snippets.de%2Fsnippet%2Fvorlage-fuer-tray-notifyicon-anwendung%2F541&edit-text=&act=url
Showing a GUI with buttons is also surprisingly simple:
using (Form _form = new Form())
{
_form.size = ...
//....
Button MyButton = new Button();
//....
//closing is also pretty simple, just like your everyday Windows Forms Application:
MyButton.Click += new EventHandler((sender, e) => { Application.Exit(); });
_form.ShowDialog();
}
Putting everything together in the main method:
private static NotifyIcon TrayIcon = new NotifyIcon();
[STAThread]
static void Main(string[] args)
{
bool WindowOpen = true;
try
{
//Make a new method above or below Main() and replace DoSomething with it.
//It will be executed everytime the F2 key is pressed.
KeyListener._HookID = KeyListener.SetHook(proc, System.Windows.Forms.Keys.F2, DoSomething);
System.Windows.Forms.ContextMenu SmallMenu = new System.Windows.Forms.ContextMenu();
System.Windows.Forms.MenuItem MenuElement;
int MenuIndex = 0;
MenuElement = new System.Windows.Forms.MenuItem();
MenuElement.Index = ++MenuIndex;
MenuElement.Text = "Close";
MenuElement.Click += new EventHandler((sender, e) => { WindowOpen = false; System.Windows.Forms.Application.Exit(); });
SmallMenu.MenuItems.Add(MenuElement);
TrayIcon.Icon = new System.Drawing.Icon("Ghost.ico");
TrayIcon.Text = "String Compatible AHK";
TrayIcon.Visible = true;
TrayIcon.ContextMenu = SmallMenu;
while (WindowOpen)
System.Windows.Forms.Application.Run();
}
finally
{
TrayIcon.Dispose();
KeyListener.UnhookWindowsHookEx(KeyListener._HookID);
}
}