SharpHook 1.0.0-preview.3

SharpHook

SharpHook is a library which provides a cross-platform global keyboard and mouse hook for .NET. It is a thin wrapper of libuiohook and provides direct access to its features as well as a higher-level interfaces and classes to work with it.

Usage

Native Methods of libuiohook

SharpHook exposes the methods of libuiohook in the SharpHook.Native.UioHook class. The SharpHook.Native namespace also contains structs and enums which represent the data returned by libuiohook.

Note: In general, you shouldn't use native methods directly. Instead, use the higher-level interface and classes provided by SharpHook.

UioHook contains the following methods for working with the global hook:

• SetDispatchProc - sets the function which will be called when an event is raised by libuiohook.
• Run - creates a global hook and runs it on the current thread, blocking it until Stop is called.
• Stop - destroys the global hook.

libuiohook also provides functions to get various system properties. The corresponding methods are also present in UioHook.

Default Global Hooks

SharpHook provides the IGlobalHook interface along with two default implementations which you can use to control the hook and subscribe to its events. Here's a basic usage example:

using SharpHook;

// ...

var hook = new TaskPoolGlobalHook();

hook.HookEnabled += OnHookEnabled;
hook.HookDisabled += OnHookDisabled;

hook.KeyTyped += OnKeyTyped;
hook.KeyPressed += OnKeyPressed;
hook.KeyReleased += OnKeyReleased;

hook.MouseClicked += OnMouseClicked;
hook.MousePressed += OnMousePressed;
hook.MouseReleased += OnMouseReleased;
hook.MouseMoved += OnMouseMoved;
hook.MouseDragged += OnMouseDragged;

hook.MouseWheel += OnMouseWheel;

await hook.Start();

First, you create the hook, then subscribe to its events, and then start it. The Start() method returns a Task which is finished when the hook is destroyed, so if you await it, you block the current async context until it stops. You can subscribe to events after the hook is started.

IGlobalHook extends IDisposable. When you call the Dispose method on a hook, it's destroyed. The contract of the interface is that once a hook has been destroyed, it cannot be started again - you'll have to create a new instance.

Important: Always use one instance of IGlobalHook at a time in the entire application since they all must use the same static method to set the hook callback for libuiohook, and there may only be one callback at a time.

SharpHook provides two implementations of IGlobalHook:

• SimpleGlobalHook runs the hook on a separate thread, and runs all of its event handlers on that same thread. This means that the handlers should generally be fast since they will block the hook from handling the events that follow if they run for too long.

• TaskPoolGlobalHook runs the hook on a separate thread, and runs all of its event handlers on other threads inside the default thread pool for tasks. The parallelism level of the handlers can be configured. On backpressure it will queue the remaining handlers. This means that the hook will be able to process all events. This implementation should be preferred to SimpleGlobalHook except for very simple use-cases.

The library also provides the GlobalHookBase class which you can extend to create your own implementation of the global hook. It runs the hook on a separate thread and calls appropriate event handlers. You only need to implement a strategy for dispatching the events.

Reactive Global Hooks

Use the SharpHook.Reactive package for reactive global hooks.

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