PROVIDING REMOTE ACCESS TO APPLICATIONS THROUGH INTERFACE HOOKS

• US 20160006803A1
• Filed: 07/07/2014
• Published: 01/07/2016
• Est. Priority Date: 07/07/2014
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Citrix Systems, Inc. (Cloud Software Group)
• Original Assignee: Citrix Systems, Inc. (Cloud Software Group)
• Inventors: Kumar, Rakesh
• Granted Patent: US 11,283,866 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/54 Interprogram communication
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/01 Protocols
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/1091 Interfacing with client-server systems or between P2P systems

Abstract

Methods, systems, and computer-readable media for providing remote access to applications executing on a host device are presented. Aspects described herein may enable a host device to provide remote access to applications executing in a user session by hooking one or more APIs (or other interfaces) associated with an application instance and a window composition module. Dynamically assigned ports may be generated and used to allow a client device to provide remote user input to an application instance operating in a remote access mode. One or more APIs associated with the application instance may be hooked to provide the remote user input to an input queue of the application instance, bypassing an operating system input queue in some embodiments. APIs associated with the application instance and the window composition module may be hooked to allow the host device to recognize window textures generated by the application instance. These recognized window textures may be sent to the remote client device. As a result, according to some aspects, a host device may enable remote access to the application instance by providing remote input to the application instance and forwarding output from the application instance to the remote client device. These and other features will be discussed further herein.

Claims

1. A method comprising:

initiating, by a host device, an instance of an application in a remote access mode by;

assigning a port to the instance of the application, and

hooking one or more application programming interfaces (APIs) associated with the instance of the application;

receiving, by the host device, user input from a remote client through the port;

providing, by the host device, the user input to the instance of the application using the one or more APIs; and

sending, by the host device, output to the remote client, wherein the output includes an application window associated with the instance of the application.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

notifying, by the host device, the remote client of the port assigned to the instance of the application.

3. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

storing, by the host device, a mapping between the port and the instance of the application.

4. The method of claim 3, further comprising:

identifying, by the host device and based on the mapping, that the user input received through the port is intended for the instance of the application.

5. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

receiving, by the host device, a request from the remote client to initiate the instance of the application.

6. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

identifying, by the host device, the application window associated with the instance of the application using one or more composition APIs associated with a window composition module; and

extracting the application window as image data from the window composition module.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein the user input is provided to the instance of the application by using the one or more APIs to inject the user input into an input queue of the instance of the application.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein the instance of the application is part of a user session on the host device having a focus application other than the instance of the application and the user input is provided to the instance of the application while it is a background application.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein the host device executes a plurality of application instances including the instance of the application and the user input received through the port is provided to the instance of the application and not another application instance of the plurality of application instances.

10. The method of claim 1, wherein the user input is keyboard input or pointing device input from the remote client.

11. One or more non-transitory computer-readable media having computer-executable instructions stored thereon that, when executed, cause at least one computing device to perform steps comprising:

initiating, by a host device, an instance of an application in a remote access mode by hooking one or more application programming interfaces (APIs), wherein the one or more APIs are associated with the instance of the application and a window composition module;

providing, by the host device, user input received from a remote client to the instance of the application;

identifying, by the host device, an application window associated with the instance of the application using the one or more APIs;

extracting the application window as image data from the window composition module; and

sending output to the remote client, wherein the output includes the extracted application window.

12. The one or more non-transitory computer-readable media of claim 11, wherein identifying the application window comprises:

marking the application window with an identifier using a first API of the one or more APIs, the first API associated with the instance of the application; and

recognizing the application window based on the identifier during processing by the window composition module using a second API of the one or more APIs, the second API associated with the window composition module.

13. The one or more non-transitory computer-readable media of claim 12, wherein marking the application window with the identifier comprises marking a predetermined pixel or group of pixels with the identifier.

14. The one or more non-transitory computer-readable media of claim 12, wherein marking the application window with the identifier comprises encoding the identifier in a pixel or group of pixels of the application window.

15. The one or more non-transitory computer-readable media of claim 12, wherein the identifier is a window handle of the application window.

16. The one or more non-transitory computer-readable media of claim 11, wherein the application window is extracted from the window composition module during a composition process that combines the application window with windows of other applications.

17. The one or more non-transitory computer-readable media of claim 11, wherein the instance of the application is part of a user session on the host device having a focus application other than the instance of the application and the application window is extracted from the window composition module while the instance of the application is a background application.

18. A system comprising:

a processor; and

memory storing computer-readable instructions that, when executed by the processor, cause the system to;

initiate an instance of an application for remote access by assigning a port to the instance of the application and hooking one or more application programming interfaces (APIs) provided by the instance of the application or a window composition module;

receive user input from a remote client through the port;

provide the user input to the instance of the application using the hooked one or more APIs;

identify an application window associated with the instance of the application using the hooked one or more APIs

extract the application window as an image from the window composition module; and

send output to the remote client, wherein the output includes the extracted application window.

19. The system of claim 18, wherein the instructions further cause the system to:

notify the remote client of the port assigned to the instance of the application;

store a mapping between the port and the instance of the application; and

identify, based on the mapping, that the user input received through the port is intended for the instance of the application.

20. The system of claim 18, wherein the instructions cause the system to identify the application window by:

marking the application window with an identifier using a first API of the one or more APIs, the first API associated with the instance of the application; and

recognizing the application window based on the identifier during processing by the window composition module using a second API of the one or more APIs, the second API associated with the window composition module.