Capture Windows Clipboard with JAVA

Question

There is how to capture the Clipboard in Windows environment with Java?

I can capture the screen, but I would like to capture the Clipboard (that’s what stays in memory when doing CTRL+C, for example).

A simple tip is enough for me.

Answer 1

Yeah, you can use the class Toolkit. Here’s an example:

import java.awt.HeadlessException;
import java.awt.Toolkit;
import java.awt.datatransfer.DataFlavor;
import java.awt.datatransfer.UnsupportedFlavorException;
import java.io.IOException;

String data = (String) Toolkit.getDefaultToolkit()
                .getSystemClipboard().getData(DataFlavor.stringFlavor);

The method getData() and the stringFlavor return plain text from Clipboard.

More information:

• http://www.javapractices.com/topic/TopicAction.do?Id=82
• http://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/api/java/awt/datatransfer/Clipboard.html