I was wondering if it is possible to simulate input in your own application without the window being focused or the window minimized, kind of like with PostMessage or SendMessage but without those APIs specifically? Thanks!
you can do that with global hooks.
so basically windows is sending messages to the application which is focused, but apps with global hooks will get all the input events for which they registered for inputs.
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I am currently making a win32 console application in c++.
Now, I have to react on the user changing the clipboard content.
Currently I am just checking for the user pressing ctrl+c, but obviously that's not enough since it won't track rightclick->copy, etc.
Sadly i cannot just use the winmessage, since i am developing a console application, hence my application does not have its own hwnd.
And i really do not want to copy the clipboard data 10 times a second or so.
This is bound to cause problems with other programs since i have to lock and unlock the clipboard every time.
Any suggestions?
To monitor clipboard changes, you can use the AddClipboardFormatListener API:
When a window has been added to the clipboard format listener list, it is posted a WM_CLIPBOARDUPDATE message whenever the contents of the clipboard have changed.
An application that doesn't have a GUI can create a message-only window to receive change notifications:
A message-only window enables you to send and receive messages. It is not visible [...]. The window simply dispatches messages.
ive recently started to work with the win32 api and im trying to do a couple of things.
I have a project that is gonna use about 4-5 windows. I want to seperate each of these into a different cpp file where each has its own message Loop. How do i pass information from window to window?(is there some sort of entry point?) at the moment im creating all windows during case WM_CREATE: and I am showing them as required.
I am trying to have a nice OOP design but having trouble with that, my main issue is the communication between windows. I have a fair amount of experience in C# and C++ and other than this the win32 api is not being a problem.
Thanks for your help!
I don't think you want a per-window message loop, unless you want each window in its own thread. You probably need a window procedure instead.
Each window class has its own window procedure, which you register by setting lpfnWndProc field of WNDCLASS structure before passing it to the RegisterClass. Once you've done that, you can use that class when creating a new window with CreateWindow.
In your case, you'll probably want to implement the window procedure so it accepts custom messages (WM_APP + x), and then pass custom messages between windows using PostMessage (for asynchronous communication) or SendMessage (for synchronous communication). If necessary, you can create separate window classes and window procedures for your different windows. A single message loop is capable of pumping messages to all these procedures.
The classic way of inter-window communication is sending / posting messages:
SendMessage
PostMessage
I try to send a mouse click event to a game application. First, i use Spy++ to find what message the application receive. I see something like : WM_MOUSEACTIVATE, WM_WINDOWPOSCHANGING, WM_ACTIVATEAPP, WM_ACTIVATE, WM_SETFOCUS, ...
i try to send the same as i see on Spy++ but it doesn't work. How to send mouse click to a game application without give it focus? . it's run in window mode. Thanks in advance.
You want WM_LMOUSEDOWN. You can always check MSDN for the documentation on which messages mean what.
The best way to automate applications and games is via SendInput. While in theory it should be possible to drive an application via WM_LUBTTONDOWN etc, many applications read the key state directly via lower level APIs (such as GetAsyncKeyState) which don't change their state to reflect the messages processed from the message queue.
Using SendInput requires actually setting the game to the foreground as the input events are synthesized at a low level and are thus delivered to the active/focused window.
When I use Spy++, I notice that mouse entering a button triggers a series of WM_TIMER .
How is Windows doing this? Is it requesting that the OS notify it or call a function pointer after X milliseconds, or does the widget register its own timer proc?
The reason I want to know this is because I'm building a game gui api in C++ and want to incorporate this sort of mechanism.
Thanks
I believe that the button's window procedure is using the SetTimer function to register the window for notification via a WM_TIMER message. You can use SetTimer either to call a specific function after time elapses, or to trigger a WM_TIMER message with the specified information.
MS Windows's GUI animation capability is very limited. You can say nothing if you had known real animation capable OS like Mac OS X.
Windows GUI is a composition of various child windows which has own event handler routine and drawing code. Very clumsy and performance inefficient of course, only provide easy access to ordinary developers.
In short, I want to say that MS Windows is the least recommendable reference for developing a game GUI framework. If I have a opportunity to develop new GUI framework, first thing I would devise is a mechanism to separate input event handling and graphic drawing for consolidated screen drawing, like game programs do.
Have a look at this:
http://www.rawmaterialsoftware.com/juce.php
(source: rawmaterialsoftware.com)
Game API's normally do their timing in the actual message loop of the application as most games draw sprites directly on the surface of the window, rather than using individual child windows.
Self animating controls that are build as child windows can schedule WM_TIMER messages to themselves via SetTimer, normally to process short term states - in your case the Button has probably used the TrackMouseEvent API to be notified via WM_MOUSELEAVE when the mouse leaves the button.
To allow more advanced animations in form based applications, Microsoft has introduced the Windows Animation Manager.
Is there any way to get key events in a Windows console? I need a way to get keydown and keyup events quickly without a GUI. I've tried using getch(), but it doesn't get keyups and waits until a key has been pressed to return.
Use ReadConsoleInput() API. Watch for events of kind KEY_EVENT. This won't work for all keydown events (Ctrl-key, shift-key, Pause-key cannot be read), but most can be read.
Use GetNumberOfConsoleInputEvents to avoid blocking.
You can use GetKeyState or GetAsyncKeyState, but that won't give you keydown/keyup events. It will only tell you what keys are currently down.
So if you really need to get the keydown/keyup events, you could install a hook.
A Console window has a window handle that is owned by code in Windows and a message pump, also owned by code in Windows.
You can get the window handle of of the console window by using GetConsoleWindowThen install a WH_CALLWNDPROC hook using SetWindowsHookEx to listen in on messages send to the console window.
You might try a WH_MSGFILTER hook instead. I don't know if this works for console windows, but it would generate less messages to be ignored if it does work.
I was just curious, how comes such a logical question doesn't have any explanation on Google,
So one has to ask it here. So I googled for: "keyboard events console application" and
guess what ... first 2 links are interesting (but unfortunately, not exactly answers to your question):
Processing mouse / keyboard input on MSDN.
Console event handlers (like Ctrl-C and window close button).
There are a number of ways. GetKeyboardState would be one of the most obvious.
You can also try SetConsoleCtrlHandler