Question

After many searches i end up using this class for global keyboard hooking. Link: Global Hook post

Imports System.Runtime.InteropServices

Public Class KeyboardHook

<DllImport("User32.dll", CharSet:=CharSet.Auto, CallingConvention:=CallingConvention.StdCall)> _
Private Overloads Shared Function SetWindowsHookEx(ByVal idHook As Integer, ByVal HookProc As KBDLLHookProc, ByVal hInstance As IntPtr, ByVal wParam As Integer) As Integer
End Function
<DllImport("User32.dll", CharSet:=CharSet.Auto, CallingConvention:=CallingConvention.StdCall)> _
Private Overloads Shared Function CallNextHookEx(ByVal idHook As Integer, ByVal nCode As Integer, ByVal wParam As IntPtr, ByVal lParam As IntPtr) As Integer
End Function
<DllImport("User32.dll", CharSet:=CharSet.Auto, CallingConvention:=CallingConvention.StdCall)> _
Private Overloads Shared Function UnhookWindowsHookEx(ByVal idHook As Integer) As Boolean
End Function

<StructLayout(LayoutKind.Sequential)> _
Private Structure KBDLLHOOKSTRUCT
    Public vkCode As UInt32
    Public scanCode As UInt32
    Public flags As KBDLLHOOKSTRUCTFlags
    Public time As UInt32
    Public dwExtraInfo As UIntPtr
End Structure

<Flags()> _
Private Enum KBDLLHOOKSTRUCTFlags As UInt32
    LLKHF_EXTENDED = &H1
    LLKHF_INJECTED = &H10
    LLKHF_ALTDOWN = &H20
    LLKHF_UP = &H80
End Enum

Public Shared Event KeyDown(ByVal Key As Keys)
Public Shared Event KeyUp(ByVal Key As Keys)

Private Const WH_KEYBOARD_LL As Integer = 13
Private Const HC_ACTION As Integer = 0
Private Const WM_KEYDOWN = &H100
Private Const WM_KEYUP = &H101
Private Const WM_SYSKEYDOWN = &H104
Private Const WM_SYSKEYUP = &H105

Private Delegate Function KBDLLHookProc(ByVal nCode As Integer, ByVal wParam As IntPtr, ByVal lParam As IntPtr) As Integer

Private KBDLLHookProcDelegate As KBDLLHookProc = New KBDLLHookProc(AddressOf KeyboardProc)
Private HHookID As IntPtr = IntPtr.Zero

Private Function KeyboardProc(ByVal nCode As Integer, ByVal wParam As IntPtr, ByVal lParam As IntPtr) As Integer
    If (nCode = HC_ACTION) Then
        Dim struct As KBDLLHOOKSTRUCT
        Select Case wParam
            Case WM_KEYDOWN, WM_SYSKEYDOWN
                RaiseEvent KeyDown(CType(CType(Marshal.PtrToStructure(lParam, struct.GetType()), KBDLLHOOKSTRUCT).vkCode, Keys))
            Case WM_KEYUP, WM_SYSKEYUP
                RaiseEvent KeyUp(CType(CType(Marshal.PtrToStructure(lParam, struct.GetType()), KBDLLHOOKSTRUCT).vkCode, Keys))
        End Select
    End If
    Return CallNextHookEx(IntPtr.Zero, nCode, wParam, lParam)
End Function

Public Sub New()
    HHookID = SetWindowsHookEx(WH_KEYBOARD_LL, KBDLLHookProcDelegate, System.Runtime.InteropServices.Marshal.GetHINSTANCE(System.Reflection.Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly.GetModules()(0)).ToInt32, 0)
    If HHookID = IntPtr.Zero Then
        Throw New Exception("Could not set keyboard hook")
    End If
End Sub

Protected Overrides Sub Finalize()
    If Not HHookID = IntPtr.Zero Then
        UnhookWindowsHookEx(HHookID)
    End If
    MyBase.Finalize()
End Sub

End Class

It works great.

My app is performing operations that take some seconds to complete (ftp upload small files on interval), and during this time the hook lovks the keyboard. This i dont want of course

I cant jump to Async FtpWebRequest right now because it needs many changes, so i thought that the solution would be to make the hoook live in another thread.

How can i do it?

EDIT: A proposal is to move my time – consuming operations (upload) to another thread.Upon doing this i am facing other problems. Because the time consuming task (upload) is in a timer i would have to rewrite a big portion in order to synchronize the file->save with the file->upload and i dont mind the app locking for 3-4 secs. what i do mind is to loose the kayboard for 3-4 secs…

Answer 1

Don’t make the hook run on a different thread (I don’t think you can, it’s based on the message loop); instead, just run your task in another thread. Here’s probably the easiest way to do that:

Call New Thread(Sub()
                    ' Do stuff here
                End Sub) With {.IsBackground = True}.Start()