Is there a way to take a screenshot using Java and save it to some sort of image?

Question

Simple as the title states: Can you use only Java commands to take a screenshot and save it? Or, do I need to use an OS specific program to take the screenshot and then gra

Answer 1

You can use java.awt.Robot to achieve this task.

below is the code of server, which saves the captured screenshot as image in your Directory.

import java.awt.image.BufferedImage;
import java.io.File;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.net.ServerSocket;
import java.net.Socket;
import java.net.SocketTimeoutException;
import java.sql.SQLException;
import java.text.DateFormat;
import java.text.SimpleDateFormat;
import java.util.Date;

import javax.imageio.ImageIO;

public class ServerApp extends Thread
{
       private ServerSocket serverSocket=null;
       private static Socket server = null;
       private Date date = null;
       private static final String DIR_NAME = "screenshots";

   public ServerApp() throws IOException, ClassNotFoundException, Exception{
       serverSocket = new ServerSocket(61000);
       serverSocket.setSoTimeout(180000);
   }

public void run()
   {
       while(true)
      {
           try
           {
              server = serverSocket.accept();
              date = new Date();
                  DateFormat dateFormat = new SimpleDateFormat("_yyMMdd_HHmmss");
              String fileName = server.getInetAddress().getHostName().replace(".", "-");
              System.out.println(fileName);
              BufferedImage img=ImageIO.read(ImageIO.createImageInputStream(server.getInputStream()));
              ImageIO.write(img, "png", new File("D:\\screenshots\\"+fileName+dateFormat.format(date)+".png"));
              System.out.println("Image received!!!!");
              //lblimg.setIcon(img);
          }
         catch(SocketTimeoutException st)
         {
               System.out.println("Socket timed out!"+st.toString());
 //createLogFile("[stocktimeoutexception]"+stExp.getMessage());
                  break;
             }
             catch(IOException e)
             {
                  e.printStackTrace();
                  break;
         }
         catch(Exception ex)
        {
              System.out.println(ex);
        }
      }
   }

   public static void main(String [] args) throws IOException, SQLException, ClassNotFoundException, Exception{
          ServerApp serverApp = new ServerApp();
          serverApp.createDirectory(DIR_NAME);
          Thread thread = new Thread(serverApp);
            thread.start();
   }

private void createDirectory(String dirName) {
    File newDir = new File("D:\\"+dirName);
    if(!newDir.exists()){
        boolean isCreated = newDir.mkdir();
    }
 }
} 

And this is Client code which is running on thread and after some minutes it is capturing the screenshot of user screen.

package com.viremp.client;

import java.awt.AWTException;
import java.awt.Dimension;
import java.awt.Rectangle;
import java.awt.Robot;
import java.awt.Toolkit;
import java.awt.image.BufferedImage;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.net.Socket;
import java.util.Random;

import javax.imageio.ImageIO;

public class ClientApp implements Runnable {
    private static long nextTime = 0;
    private static ClientApp clientApp = null;
    private String serverName = "192.168.100.18"; //loop back ip
    private int portNo = 61000;
    //private Socket serverSocket = null;

    /**
     * @param args
     * @throws InterruptedException 
     */
    public static void main(String[] args) throws InterruptedException {
        clientApp = new ClientApp();
        clientApp.getNextFreq();
        Thread thread = new Thread(clientApp);
        thread.start();
    }

    private void getNextFreq() {
        long currentTime = System.currentTimeMillis();
        Random random = new Random();
        long value = random.nextInt(180000); //1800000
        nextTime = currentTime + value;
        //return currentTime+value;
    }

    @Override
    public void run() {
        while(true){
            if(nextTime < System.currentTimeMillis()){
                System.out.println(" get screen shot ");
                try {
                    clientApp.sendScreen();
                    clientApp.getNextFreq();
                } catch (AWTException e) {
                    // TODO Auto-generated catch block
                    System.out.println(" err"+e);
                } catch (IOException e) {
                    // TODO Auto-generated catch block
                    e.printStackTrace();
                } catch(Exception e){
                    e.printStackTrace();
                }

            }
            //System.out.println(" statrted ....");
        }

    }

    private void sendScreen()throws AWTException, IOException {
           Socket serverSocket = new Socket(serverName, portNo);
             Toolkit toolkit = Toolkit.getDefaultToolkit();
             Dimension dimensions = toolkit.getScreenSize();
                 Robot robot = new Robot();  // Robot class 
                 BufferedImage screenshot = robot.createScreenCapture(new Rectangle(dimensions));
                 ImageIO.write(screenshot,"png",serverSocket.getOutputStream());
                 serverSocket.close();
    }
}