Capture mouse movement and export to image [code | app]

Question

To get more in depth information about the usage of WinForm or Webapplications I want to capture mouse-movement and click information. It would be perfect if this could be rendered to an image.

The result would be something like this:

The question is how does one start with creating an app like this?

• How do I receive mousemovements and clicks when its a process from another application?
• How convert mousemovements to an image?

(Anyone know if there is a opensource of free/cheap app which can do this)

IOGraphica is able to do this, but it is in Java and it is free, but not open source.

Answer 1

I would try to capture any mouse movement/click of your windows and store it in a collection. When you finished recording - try to draw your image. I would recommend looking for "c# capture mouse" or "mouse hook" in google. Some time ago I did this for getting a keyboard hook. You may have a look at Processing Global Mouse Events.

In terms of code this may help:

Click to copy

Dictionary<Point, MouseEventInfo> dict = new Dictionary<Point, MouseEventInfo>();

/// see given link to find the correct way to get this kind of event
public void mouse_event(....)
{
   /// get mouse coordinates

   /// create point struct

   /// check if point exists in DICT

   /// no - add new MouseEventInfo at Point

   /// yes - access MouseEventInfo object and increase a value according to the event

}

public void onFinished()
{
     /// create new bitmap/image - width/height according to your screen resultion

     /// iterate through all MouseEventInfo objects and draw any information

}

/// stores mouse event info for a point
class MouseEventInfo
{
      Point p;
      int moved=0;
      int clicked=0;
      int doubleClicked=0;
}

I know this is just a piece of pseudoCode - anyway - I hope this may help you! Ah - keep in mind that any kind of hook (keyboard, mouse or anything else) may result in a virus alert of your antiVir.

hth

Answer 2

If you're looking for something which you could run externally and track mouse movement and clicks, you might find this mouse/keyboard hooking project over at codeproject.com useful:

http://www.codeproject.com/KB/system/globalmousekeyboardlib.aspx

There's a sample application and a hooking lib with full source. It'd be a starting point to use in your efforts.