java system-wide keyboard and mouse state

Question

Is there a way to listen to the mouse and keyboard events system-wide without taking these out of system queue?

E.g. is there a way to set a demon, let's say, which would listen and report each and every keyboard and mouse event?

Answer 1

It's not possible using pure Java. But you can use JNI (Java Native Interface), which is working on code written in C++ and natively compiled. So, this way you can write the Global KeyListener in C++ and let make Java use of it.

There is an active project implementing this for Linux, OS X and Windows: http://code.google.com/p/jnativehook/