How to set Win32 window as owner of WPF window?

Sam picture Sam · Apr 8, 2010 · Viewed 11.9k times · Source

I want to use WPF windows in a legacy win32 application. I'd like to behave them in a similar way, like the WPF window always being displayed on top of the win32 window.

For this I'd like to set the owner of the WPF window to the win32 windows, but I got no idea how to achieve this.

Any help here?

Since the answer is hidden behind some link, here the code that did the trick:

System::Windows::Interop::WindowInteropHelper^ helper = gcnew System::Windows::Interop::WindowInteropHelper(myWpfChildWindow);
helper->Owner = (System::IntPtr)myMainWindowHWND;

Answer

Ed Gonzalez picture Ed Gonzalez · Apr 8, 2010

This article shows how to get the handles for both as well as how to make the WPF window become a transparent overlay for the win32 window.

http://blogs.microsoft.co.il/blogs/tamir/archive/2007/04/11/Transparent-WPF-control-over-unmanaged-window-handle.aspx

This article uses a WindowInteropHelper to accomplish similar functionality.

http://blogs.msdn.com/wpfsdk/archive/2007/04/03/centering-wpf-windows-with-wpf-and-non-wpf-owner-windows.aspx

MSDN page on WindowInteropHelper:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.windows.interop.windowinterophelper.aspx

Hope that helps, Ed