Mouse and keyboard hook library. Currently for Windows.
KeyCap is a global mouse and keyboard capture library, written in C#. It currently uses the Windows API to read mouse and keyboard events, meaning it is currently available for Windows.
Fair question considering there are quite a few libraries achieving the same task that are already available and tested. There are a few reasons:
-
This may become multiplatform.
I'm currently working on other projects that utilize this library, and if there is a demand, it's nice to have this piece under my control for this possibility (despite it being notoriously hard).
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Other similar projects don't quite fit my needs.
Similar projects that I found didn't support eg. cancelling keypresses. On top of that, I wanted to be completely independent of not just other packages, but WPF and Winforms too.
As a side note, I highly recommend using other libraries if you're looking for just global key/mouse event capture. They're likely better documented and tested. But if the above also describes what you're looking for, give it a try, hopefully I can surprise you.
You'll need .net 5 (standard), and that's it!
//For console apps, you can use KeyListenerApp or MouseListenerApp
static void Main(string[] args) {
KeyListenerApp app = new KeyListenerApp(null);
app.KeyEvent += (o, e) => {
//Ctrl + Esc will exit.
if (e.KeyboardState.Ctrl == true && e.EventKeyCode == KeyCap.Keys.ESCAPE) {
app.Exit();
}
//All the relevant info of the event
//Key press/hold/release, and the key itself
Console.WriteLine(e.EventType);
Console.WriteLine(e.EventKeyCode);
Console.WriteLine(e.ScanCode);
//If this event generates character input, you can also do this
if (e.IsCharInput) {
Console.WriteLine(e.Characters);
}
//All the modifier keys
Console.WriteLine("Shift: {0}", e.KeyboardState.Shift);
Console.WriteLine("Ctrl: {0}", e.KeyboardState.Ctrl);
Console.WriteLine("Alt: {0}", e.KeyboardState.Alt);
Console.WriteLine("Win: {0}", e.KeyboardState.Win);
};
//All the "App" listeners implement a message a loop
app.Start();
} //If your application already implements a message loop,
//or you're already using an "App" somewhere, you can use the vanilla listeners.
MouseListener listener = new MouseListener();
listener.MouseEvent += (o, e) => {
//You'll get every single move event, so unless you're tracking the
//mouse, you should return quickly.
if (e.EventType == MouseEventType.MouseMove) {
return;
}
//The type of event (eg. KeyDown, Scroll), and the affected mouse key
Console.WriteLine(e.EventType);
Console.WriteLine(e.MouseKey);
//The location of the pointer
Console.WriteLine(e.Location);
};The App listeners internally implement a message loop to capture events. This means that they can be used as the root of your program. If you want to do a bit more than just processing input globally, you can define a Window Procedure.
class Program {
static void Main(string[] args) {
//Set up the app, and specify a Window procedure
KeyListenerApp app = new KeyListenerApp(WindowProc);
app.KeyEvent += ...
app.Start();
}
static void WindowProc(MSG message) {
//Handle specific messages here
//For example, you can also process Clipboard events this way
}
}
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