delphi - How to bring my application to the front?

Question

I know all the reasons why it is a bad idea. I dislike it if an application steals input focus, but this is for purely personal use and I want it to happen; it will not disturb anything.

(for the curious: I am running unit tests in NetBeans, which generate a log file. When my background application sees the log file's timestamp change I want it to parse the log file and come to the front to show the results).

This question did not help, nor did googling. It seems that BringToFront() hasn't worked for a long time and I can't find any alternative that does.

Any ideas?

Answer 1

Here's something simple that seems to work, tested with multiple boxes consisting of XP, Server2003, Vista, Server2008, W7. Test application ran with a standard (or admin) account, stole the input focus from notepad while writing in the foreground.

var
  Input: TInput;
begin
  ZeroMemory(@Input, SizeOf(Input));
  SendInput(1, Input, SizeOf(Input)); // don't send anyting actually to another app..
  SetForegroundWindow(Handle);

You can tweak it further f.i. for a minimized app or such if required.