Question

Capture keyboard input in console application?

Asked by: nmotion

Greetings, experts. I have a need in a console application that if a user presses a certain combination of keys (CTRL + SHFT + K for example) the console app picks it up and executes a sub.

At the moment I've been able to create this functionality using a simple input-read, but I'm now told that this needs to be of a hot-key type behavior (i.e. they just press the key combination, and not input, press enter, and wait).

As this is for a console application I've seen tons of keyloggers, etc., but they look very bulky. I only need to monitor for this one combination of keys.

If it can't be done easily I'm okay with that, but if there's something I'm just plain missing I'd love to know.

Thanks in advance!

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Asked On
2009-10-21 at 15:13:03ID24832606
Tags

VB.NET

,

console

,

keyboard

,

input

,

capture

Topics

.NET

,

Microsoft Visual Basic.Net

Participating Experts
2
Points
250
Comments
3

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Answers

 

by: sl8rzPosted on 2009-10-21 at 15:23:56ID: 25629134

 

by: Idle_MindPosted on 2009-10-21 at 16:10:11ID: 25629407

Don't think your missing anything...to capture hotkeys (without Console.Readline) you'd need a message pump which means you need to get rid of the Console app and use a WinForms project instead...

You can make a WINDOWLESS app that has a message pump by inheriting from ApplicationContext and then passing your instance of that to Application.Run() in Sub Main.

 

by: nmotionPosted on 2009-10-27 at 14:16:51ID: 31644232

Thank you both. Both answers are correct.

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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