How to send keys data to a Console window without having focus

Question

I\'ve been trying to send data to a console window without it having focus. I\'ve used a simple Keyboard Hook from here: Capture keystroke without focus in console

I\'ve

Answer 1

You can replace the standard input stream with your own and then write to it. To do that call Console.SetIn with your new stream.

Here is a very little example:

    static void Main(string[] args)
    {

        MemoryStream ms = new MemoryStream();
        StreamReader sr = new StreamReader(ms);
        StreamWriter sw = new StreamWriter(ms);
        Console.SetIn(sr);


        sw.WriteLine("Hi all!");
        ms.Seek(0, SeekOrigin.Begin);
        string line = Console.ReadLine();

        Console.WriteLine(line);

    }

Only problem here is you must control the stream's position and if the Console reaches the end of the stream it will continue returning a null value.

There are many solutions for those problems, from handling the null values at the console app level to creating a custom StreamReader which locks until a line has been written (Console uses by default a stream of type SyncTextReader, but it's private).