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Support Control Patterns in a UI Automation Provider

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Note

This documentation is intended for .NET Framework developers who want to use the managed UI Automation classes defined in the System.Windows.Automation namespace. For the latest information about UI Automation, see Windows Automation API: UI Automation.

This topic shows how to implement one or more control patterns on a UI Automation provider so that client applications can manipulate controls and get data from them.

Support Control Patterns

  1. Implement the appropriate interfaces for the control patterns that the element should support, such as IInvokeProvider for InvokePattern.

  2. Return the object containing your implementation of each control interface in your implementation of IRawElementProviderSimple.GetPatternProvider

Example 1

The following example shows an implementation of ISelectionProvider for a single-selection custom list box. It returns three properties and gets the currently selected item.

#region ISelectionProvider Members

/// <summary>
/// Specifies whether selection of more than one item at a time is supported.
/// </summary>
public bool CanSelectMultiple
{
    get
    {
        return false;
    }
}

/// <summary>
/// Specifies whether the list has to have an item selected at all times.
/// </summary>
public bool IsSelectionRequired
{
    get
    {
        return true;
    }
}

/// <summary>
/// Returns the automation provider for the selected list item.
/// </summary>
/// <returns>The selected item.</returns>
/// <remarks>
/// MyList is an ArrayList collection of providers for items in the list box.
/// SelectedIndex is the index of the selected item.
/// </remarks>
public IRawElementProviderSimple[] GetSelection()
{
    if (SelectedIndex >= 0)
    {
        IRawElementProviderSimple itemProvider = (IRawElementProviderSimple)MyList[SelectedIndex];
        IRawElementProviderSimple[] providers =  { itemProvider };
        return providers;
    }
    else
    {
        return null;
    }
}
#endregion ISelectionProvider Members

#Region "ISelectionProvider Members"

    ''' <summary>
    ''' Specifies whether selection of more than one item at a time is supported.
    ''' </summary>

    Public ReadOnly Property CanSelectMultiple() As Boolean _
        Implements ISelectionProvider.CanSelectMultiple
        Get
            Return False
        End Get
    End Property
    ''' <summary>
    ''' Specifies whether the list has to have an item selected at all times.
    ''' </summary>

    Public ReadOnly Property IsSelectionRequired() As Boolean _
        Implements ISelectionProvider.IsSelectionRequired
        Get
            Return True
        End Get
    End Property

    ''' <summary>
    ''' Returns the automation provider for the selected list item.
    ''' </summary>
    ''' <returns>The selected item.</returns>
    ''' <remarks>
    ''' MyList is an ArrayList collection of providers for items in the list box.
    ''' SelectedIndex is the index of the selected item.
    ''' </remarks>
    Public Function GetSelection() As IRawElementProviderSimple() _
        Implements ISelectionProvider.GetSelection
        If SelectedIndex >= 0 Then
            Dim itemProvider As IRawElementProviderSimple = DirectCast(MyList(SelectedIndex), IRawElementProviderSimple)
            Dim providers(1) As IRawElementProviderSimple
            providers(0) = itemProvider
            Return providers
        Else
            Return Nothing
        End If

    End Function 'GetSelection 
#End Region
    Private Members As ISelectionProvider

Example 2

The following example shows an implementation of GetPatternProvider that returns the class implementing ISelectionProvider. Most list box controls would support other patterns as well, but in this example a null reference (Nothing in Microsoft Visual Basic .NET) is returned for all other pattern identifiers.

/// <summary>
/// Returns the object that supports the specified pattern.
/// </summary>
/// <param name="patternId">ID of the pattern.</param>
/// <returns>Object that implements IInvokeProvider.</returns>
/// <remarks>
/// In this case, the ISelectionProvider interface is implemented in another provider-defined class,
/// ListPattern. However, it could be implemented in the base provider class, in which case the
/// method would simply return "this".
/// </remarks>
object IRawElementProviderSimple.GetPatternProvider(int patternId)
{
    if (patternId == SelectionPatternIdentifiers.Pattern.Id)
    {
        return new ListPattern(myItems, SelectedIndex);
    }
    else
    {
        return null;
    }
}

''' <summary>
''' Returns the object that supports the specified pattern.
''' </summary>
''' <param name="patternId">ID of the pattern.</param>
''' <returns>Object that implements IInvokeProvider.</returns>
''' <remarks>
''' In this case, the ISelectionProvider interface is implemented in another provider-defined class,
''' ListPattern. However, it could be implemented in the base provider class, in which case the
''' method would simply return "this".
''' </remarks>
Function GetPatternProvider(ByVal patternId As Integer) As Object _
    Implements IRawElementProviderSimple.GetPatternProvider

    If patternId = SelectionPatternIdentifiers.Pattern.Id Then
        Return New ListPattern(myItems, SelectedIndex)
    Else
        Return Nothing
    End If

End Function 'IRawElementProviderSimple.GetPatternProvider

See also