Keyboard & Program interaction

[theChameleon]

hi, how do i make the program type stuff automatically after listening to a keystroke on the keyboard?

for example, i press on the "right shift" button in notepad, and it'll type "hello world".

im thinking of doing a macro kinda thing; push one button, a heck of a lot buttons that i set gets pressed automatically.

what APIs are needed, and are there any examples?

thanks.

[Disch]

RegisterHotKey to set up a global hotkey. You'll receive a message whenever that hotkey is pressed even if your program is not in focus:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms646309(VS.85).aspx


GetForegroundWindow() to get an HWND to the active window:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms633505(VS.85).aspx


And PostMessage() to send that HWND messages:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms644944(VS.85).aspx


Note that I don't think any key combination can be a hotkey. So just trying to use right-shift as a key won't work -- it'd have to be Shift+X or something like that.

You can fall back to GetASyncKeyState() to check for keys like right shift, but that requires constant polling, rather than letting you get notified.

[george135]

The right method is with Kbd Hook.
Plenty of samples in MSDN... (C)

[theChameleon]

ah... Visual C++ is totally new to me and im a Java programmer.