How to simulate a Ctrl A + Ctrl C using keybd_event

Question

How to simulate a Ctrl-A + Ctrl-C using keybd_event?

Because I am simulating a ctrl a + ctrl c on a webbrowser form to copy the entire contents on clipboard. i used the SendKeys.SendWait but it is not copying the entire contents!

Answer 1

This should work

[DllImport("user32.dll", SetLastError = true)]
static extern void keybd_event(byte bVk, byte bScan, int dwFlags, int dwExtraInfo);

public const int KEYEVENTF_KEYDOWN = 0x0000; // New definition
public const int KEYEVENTF_EXTENDEDKEY = 0x0001; //Key down flag
public const int KEYEVENTF_KEYUP = 0x0002; //Key up flag
public const int VK_LCONTROL = 0xA2; //Left Control key code
public const int A = 0x41; //A key code
public const int C = 0x43; //C key code

public static void PressKeys()
{
    // Hold Control down and press A
    keybd_event(VK_LCONTROL, 0, KEYEVENTF_KEYDOWN, 0);
    keybd_event(A, 0, KEYEVENTF_KEYDOWN, 0);
    keybd_event(A, 0, KEYEVENTF_KEYUP, 0);
    keybd_event(VK_LCONTROL, 0, KEYEVENTF_KEYUP, 0);

    // Hold Control down and press C
    keybd_event(VK_LCONTROL, 0, KEYEVENTF_KEYDOWN, 0);
    keybd_event(C, 0, KEYEVENTF_KEYDOWN, 0);
    keybd_event(C, 0, KEYEVENTF_KEYUP, 0);
    keybd_event(VK_LCONTROL, 0, KEYEVENTF_KEYUP, 0);
}

Answer 2

You are able to fire the Cntrl-A + Cntrl-C event, am I right? But for some reason you are not copying all the webpage text to clipboard?

I don't know much about doing a Cntrl-A + Cntrl-C event, and I'm also not clear as to what u r trying to do, but I gave it my best shot and came up with something that grabs all the text from a webpage and copies it to the clipboard off of a button click event...(now obviously you would want to use ur Cntrl-A + Cntrl-C). Also for debugging purposes I put the clipboard text in a .txt file so you can double check.

I'm also using the HTML Agility Pack. You can get that from http://htmlagilitypack.codeplex.com/

CODE

    private void btnClip_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        string address = "http://animalrights.about.com/";
        string text = "";

        // Retrieve resource as a stream
        Stream data = client.OpenRead(new Uri(address)); //client here is a WebClient

        //create document
        HtmlAgilityPack.HtmlDocument document = new HtmlAgilityPack.HtmlDocument();
        document.Load(data);

        //receive all the text fields
        foreach (HtmlNode node in document.DocumentNode.SelectNodes("//child::p"))
        {
            text += node.InnerText + "\n\n";
        }

        Clipboard.SetText(text);
        string path = @"C:\Users\David\Documents\Visual Studio 2012\Projects\CopyToClipBoard\CopyToClipBoard\bin\MyTest.txt";

        // Delete the file if it exists.
        if (File.Exists(path))
        {
            File.Delete(path);
        }

        // Create the file.
        using (FileStream fs = File.Create(path, 1024))
        {
            Byte[] info = new UTF8Encoding(true).GetBytes(text);

            // Add some information to the file.
            fs.Write(info, 0, info.Length);
        }

        //destroy data object
        data.Close();
        data.Dispose();
    }

Open notepad to check file

Answer 3

Windows Input Simulator makes this super easy.

The Windows Input Simulator provides a simple .NET (C#) interface to simulate Keyboard or Mouse input using the Win32 SendInput method. All of the Interop is done for you and there's a simple programming model for sending multiple keystrokes.

Nuget package -> Install-Package InputSimulator

https://inputsimulator.codeplex.com/