c# - Check Keyboard Input Winforms

Question

I was wondering if instead of doing this

protected override void OnKeyDown(KeyEventArgs e)
{
    if (e.KeyCode == Keys.A)
        Console.WriteLine("The A key is down.");
}

I could set up a bool method and do this:

if(KeyDown(Keys.A))
// do whatever here

I've been sitting here for ages trying to figure out how to do it. But I just can't wrap my head around it.

In case you were wondering, my plan is to call the bool inside a different method, to check for input.

Answer 1

Since you usually want to perform an action immediately after pressing a key, usually using a KeyDown event is enough.

But in some cases I suppose you want to check if a specific key is down in middle of a some process, so you can use GetKeyState method this way:

[DllImport("user32.dll", CharSet = CharSet.Auto, ExactSpelling = true)]
public static extern short GetKeyState(int keyCode);
public const int KEY_PRESSED = 0x8000;
public static bool IsKeyDown(Keys key)

{
    return Convert.ToBoolean(GetKeyState((int)key) & KEY_PRESSED);
}

You should know, each time you check the key state using for example IsKeyDown(Keys.A) the method returns true if the key is pressed at the moment of checking the state.