I want to create an application. This application has to do something when a user presses special keys on keyboard or/and uses scroll wheel. This application is a service. It has no windows. I want to catch any keyboard or mouse events which were designed with other applications.
For example, you are watching TV by 3rd party application. If you press Ctrl + Shift and use scroll wheel my application changes the volume.
I use Windows 7 x64 and Visual Studio 2008.
You can call SetWindowsHookEx() to be notified when various events occur. You probably want to use the keyboard hook and the mouse hook to watch for mouse events.
If your application is a true Win32 service, then on Vista and beyond, the application won't receive keyboard or mouse events - to close a security hole (search for "shatter attack"), Microsoft isolated all services to prevent them from interacting with the user.
You'll need to have your application run in the session with the interactively logged on user.
You can use the RAW INPUT method, It is more reliable than GetAsyncKeyState etc.
I wrote this article on Code Project that may be of use to you.
There is both C# and a MASM source code versions available.
Related
I am using Windows 10, while key events work okay. The problem is with mouse events clicking in the console sort of just automatically assumes I am trying to select and thus goes into select mode. I am not sure if there is something in the API to turn this off.
Update: Anyone who wants to solve this here is a link to the solution SOLUTION
Mouse selection mode was one of the console improvement features introduced in Windows 10. It can be turned on/off from console parameters. Note that if you want to disable it for your application you can configure console parameters for shortcut.
Background
I'm implementing a simple WIN32 application consist of a window.
The user may show/hide the window using a special hotkey. I register the hotkey using RegisterHotKey and respond to WM_HOTKEY
Problem
if user plays a game and accidentally (or not accidentally) press the hotkey combination, then my window pops up and as a result the game is minimized.
Question
Is there a (native) way to know that the user is in gaming mode, or any other special mode, that I could disable the hotkey response
Note
I would also like if windows would make this a feature while I play games. For example don't respond to WinKey+D while I'm in gaming mode.
You can use the SHQueryUserNotificationState function to determine whether the user is playing a full screen D3D game. It will report QUNS_RUNNING_D3D_FULL_SCREEN.
I've got a Windows 7 VM which runs my mandatory corporate communication systems (Lync and Outlook). What I'd like to do is run a process on this Windows machine which monitors the system tray and sends notifications to my host machine (Xubuntu 13.04) so I'm informed when I get an email or IM (I've already tried seamless RDP to do this but it's an ineffective solution).
Anything Linux or network oriented I can handle with relative ease, what I do not know how to do is to how to query the state of the Windows system tray (or attach an event listener for state changes). I'm comfortable with C++ and Python but I'll give any viable solution a go.
Detailed state information would be preferable but at the very minimum I need to be able to detect changes in the number of icons in the tray.
On Windows, if you install Visual Studio, among Visual Studio Tools there is a useful tool, named "Spy++", basically it's a tool that shows you all the windows and gives ability to see what messages particular window receives.
Using this tool, you can see that whole panel, that contains "Start button", shortcuts, tray, clock, etc. is "Shell_TrayWnd". You can use "Find" menu to search for a particular window just dragging an "aim" on any window.
The tray window itself is "SysPager" (000100D2 on attached image), you can log messages for this window and see what type of message this window receives when you receive mail in Outlook.
After that you can write a code that will listen to all messages that this window receives, and basing on what you have seen in "Spy++" determine what happened.
This is just for start. Writing a code that will get a window handle and listen to messages that window receives is another part, but I think it's already covered at MSDN or even at StackOverflow.
Searching for a particular window handle is done by FindWindowEx function and in order to listen to message you have to set a "hook" that is done by SetWindowsHookEx function. Hooking is described pretty good on MSDN.
may be you need Outlook inspector (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/office/ff869356(v=office.15).aspx). As i understand it helps to watch events outlook processes.
I'm trying to create a simple bot in Qt and need therefor a way of simulating keyboard presses OUTSIDE the Qt application itself.
I've successfully made this possible by using the "old" keybd_event
keybd_event(Qt::Key_A,0,0, 0); // Pressing the 'A-button"
and that works out fine. But i can't make it when i'm trying to execute a 'select all' command which needs two buttons to be pressed at once.
As i researched the problem on Google i was refereed to the 'SendInput' function with the message 'This function (keybd_event) has been superseded. Use SendInput instead.'
The problem now is that I've little knowledge of windows API and especially in the contex of "Qt" and would like guidance on how to get started.
keybd_event is actually not Qt function, but part of Windows Api.
Both keybd_event and SendInput allow you to send press event and release event. If you want to send combination ctrl+A you should send events as follows:
press Ctrl -> press A -> release A -> release Ctrl
If you want to use keybd_event, you need to call it 4 times subsequently, if you want to use SendInput, you can make an array of 4 events.
You should use keyboard codes from Windows API to simulate keyboard events, while Qt's codes may coincide with Microsoft's.
Also you should understand that this solution has nothing to do with Qt, it Windows specified.
You just found all links to docs you would need, I think you should start studing it and ask more concrete questions, if you would have any problems.
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.