I'm trying to write a simple app that counts every mouse click that occurs in Windows (left and right separated), not only within a form. So far i did not have any success in finding such solution. Thanks!
1 Answer
You will need to use the Win32 Hook API to capture mouse events. Stephen Toub provides a nice bit of sample code on his MSDN blog post about setting up a mouse hook.
class InterceptMouse
{
private static LowLevelMouseProc _proc = HookCallback;
private static IntPtr _hookID = IntPtr.Zero;
public static void Main()
{
_hookID = SetHook(_proc);
Application.Run();
UnhookWindowsHookEx(_hookID);
}
private static IntPtr SetHook(LowLevelMouseProc proc)
{
using (Process curProcess = Process.GetCurrentProcess())
using (ProcessModule curModule = curProcess.MainModule)
{
return SetWindowsHookEx(WH_MOUSE_LL, proc,
GetModuleHandle(curModule.ModuleName), 0);
}
}
private delegate IntPtr LowLevelMouseProc(int nCode, IntPtr wParam, IntPtr lParam);
private static IntPtr HookCallback(
int nCode, IntPtr wParam, IntPtr lParam)
{
if (nCode >= 0 &&
MouseMessages.WM_LBUTTONDOWN == (MouseMessages)wParam)
{
MSLLHOOKSTRUCT hookStruct = (MSLLHOOKSTRUCT)Marshal.PtrToStructure(lParam, typeof(MSLLHOOKSTRUCT));
Console.WriteLine(hookStruct.pt.x + ", " + hookStruct.pt.y);
}
return CallNextHookEx(_hookID, nCode, wParam, lParam);
}
private const int WH_MOUSE_LL = 14;
private enum MouseMessages
{
WM_LBUTTONDOWN = 0x0201,
WM_LBUTTONUP = 0x0202,
WM_MOUSEMOVE = 0x0200,
WM_MOUSEWHEEL = 0x020A,
WM_RBUTTONDOWN = 0x0204,
WM_RBUTTONUP = 0x0205
}
[StructLayout(LayoutKind.Sequential)]
private struct POINT
{
public int x;
public int y;
}
[StructLayout(LayoutKind.Sequential)]
private struct MSLLHOOKSTRUCT
{
public POINT pt;
public uint mouseData;
public uint flags;
public uint time;
public IntPtr dwExtraInfo;
}
[DllImport("user32.dll", CharSet = CharSet.Auto, SetLastError = true)]
private static extern IntPtr SetWindowsHookEx(int idHook,
LowLevelMouseProc lpfn, IntPtr hMod, uint dwThreadId);
[DllImport("user32.dll", CharSet = CharSet.Auto, SetLastError = true)]
[return: MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.Bool)]
private static extern bool UnhookWindowsHookEx(IntPtr hhk);
[DllImport("user32.dll", CharSet = CharSet.Auto, SetLastError = true)]
private static extern IntPtr CallNextHookEx(IntPtr hhk, int nCode,
IntPtr wParam, IntPtr lParam);
[DllImport("kernel32.dll", CharSet = CharSet.Auto, SetLastError = true)]
private static extern IntPtr GetModuleHandle(string lpModuleName);
}
In your code you would set this up to record WM_LBUTTONDOWN and WM_RBUTTONDOWN events.
