How to get clipboard from any where in windows

Question

Hi Every Body I want to create an application (may be as a service) that when i copy a text from any file in windows application could insert in db. How and which method should i use? Thanks for any guides. Regards Ali

Vulpes · Answer

Well first of all I don't think you'll be able to access the current user's clipboard from a windows service because the service will be running on a different 'window station' and will therefore have its own clipboard. Prior to Windows Vista there were ways for a service to interact with the user but these no longer work. So I think you'll therefore need to use a 'hidden' console or windows forms application instead and perhaps set it up to work as a 'Scheduled Task'. Although .NET has a Clipboard class unfortunately it has no events. So if you're wanting to take action as soon as some text hits the clipboard you'll have to resort to P/Invoking the Win32 API functions which deal with clipboard operations. For an understanding of these I'd check out this link and the section entitled 'Monitoring Clipboard contents': http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/ms649016(v=vs.85).aspx#dataxchg_Monitoring_Clipboard_Contents

Alireza · Answer

Thanks Vulpes That's very useful. Regards Ali