Does anyone know how can I make my program send/read text from another program? Let's say that my active window is Notepad. I would like to be able to insert text and also read what has been typed (i.e. it would copy & paste).
Any macro program can do that, but I want to treat the data with Java.
Thanks.
If what you want is just a copy&paste tool wich can interact with other programs, you can try the api clipboard from awt:
import java.awt.datatransfer.Clipboard;
import java.awt.datatransfer.ClipboardOwner;
import java.awt.datatransfer.Transferable;
import java.awt.datatransfer.StringSelection;
import java.awt.datatransfer.DataFlavor;
import java.awt.datatransfer.UnsupportedFlavorException;
import java.awt.Toolkit;
it can be useful:
// clipboard
public void getClipboardContents() throws Exception
{
BufferedReader in;
Clipboard clipboard = Toolkit.getDefaultToolkit().getSystemClipboard();
Transferable contents = clipboard.getContents(null);
boolean hasTransferableText =(contents != null) && contents.isDataFlavorSupported(DataFlavor.stringFlavor);
if ( hasTransferableText )
{
in = new BufferedReader (new StringReader((String)contents.getTransferData(DataFlavor.stringFlavor)));
String linea = in.readLine();
while (linea!=null)
{
// ...
linea = in.readLine();
}
in.close();
}
}
public void setClipboardContents( String aString )
{
StringSelection stringSelection = new StringSelection( aString );
Clipboard clipboard = Toolkit.getDefaultToolkit().getSystemClipboard();
clipboard.setContents( stringSelection, this );
}
the clipboard can be fullfilled from any app and read from java because it's a sysyem pool, but you cannot receive events from windows apps like notepad, you can copy notepad's text and paste it to your java app.
