Get current active window's title in Java

Question

I am trying to write a Java program that logs what application I\'m using every 5 seconds (this is a time tracker app). I need some way to find out what the current active w

Answer 1

I have written a java program using user361601's script. I hope this will help others.

import java.io.BufferedReader;
import java.io.InputStreamReader;

public class WindowAndProcessInfo4Linux {

public static final String WIN_ID_CMD = "xprop -root | grep " + "\"_NET_ACTIVE_WINDOW(WINDOW)\"" + "|cut -d ' ' -f 5";
public static final String WIN_INFO_CMD_PREFIX = "xwininfo -id ";
public static final String WIN_INFO_CMD_MID = " |awk \'BEGIN {FS=\"\\\"\"}/xwininfo: Window id/{print $2}\' | sed \'s/-[^-]*$//g\'";

public String execShellCmd(String cmd){
    try {  

        Runtime runtime = Runtime.getRuntime();  
        Process process = runtime.exec(new String[] { "/bin/bash", "-c", cmd });  
        int exitValue = process.waitFor();  
        System.out.println("exit value: " + exitValue);  
        BufferedReader buf = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(process.getInputStream()));  
        String line = "";  
        String output = "";
        while ((line = buf.readLine()) != null) {
            output = line;
        }
        return output;
    } catch (Exception e) {  
        System.out.println(e);
        return null;
    }  
}

public String windowInfoCmd(String winId){
    if(null!=winId && !"".equalsIgnoreCase(winId)){
        return WIN_INFO_CMD_PREFIX+winId +WIN_INFO_CMD_MID;
    }
    return null;
}

public static void main (String [] args){
    WindowAndProcessInfo4Linux windowAndProcessInfo4Linux = new WindowAndProcessInfo4Linux();
    try {
        Thread.sleep(4000);
    } catch (InterruptedException e) {
        // TODO Auto-generated catch block
        e.printStackTrace();
    }
    String winId = windowAndProcessInfo4Linux.execShellCmd(WIN_ID_CMD);
    String winInfoMcd = windowAndProcessInfo4Linux.windowInfoCmd(winId);
    String windowTitle = windowAndProcessInfo4Linux.execShellCmd(winInfoMcd);
    System.out.println("window title is: "+ windowTitle);

}
}

// the thread.sleep is there so that you get time to switch to other window :) also, you may use quartz from spring to schedule it.