Question

I am looking for a way to convert the value of a string to the equivalent System.Windows.Forms.Keys item. Then this value will be used with PressKey to simulate the corresponding Key. I tried using the KeyConverter like this:

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

    public static void PressKey(System.Windows.Forms.Keys key, bool up)
        {
            const int KEYEVENTF_EXTENDEDKEY = 0x1;
            const int KEYEVENTF_KEYUP = 0x2;
            if (up)
            {
                keybd_event((byte)key, 0x45, KEYEVENTF_EXTENDEDKEY | KEYEVENTF_KEYUP, (UIntPtr)0);
            }
            else
            {
                keybd_event((byte)key, 0x45, KEYEVENTF_EXTENDEDKEY, (UIntPtr)0);
            }
        }

    KeyConverter kc = new KeyConverter();
    PressKey((System.Windows.Forms.Keys)kc.ConvertFromString(string), false);

What I need is a string like "Enter" to be converted to System.Windows.Forms.Keys.Enter. But KeyConverter is not returning anything. Any thoughts?

Answer 1

Use Enum.Parse to convert a string into the corresponding enumeration value:

public static Keys ConvertFromString(string keystr) {
    return (Keys)Enum.Parse(typeof(Keys), keystr);
}

Note that Enum.Parse will throw an ArgumentException if the key string is not in the enumeration. If you don’t want that, use Enum.TryParse instead, which returns a bool indicating if the conversion was successful.