Let my MFC dialog receive keystroke events before its controls (MFC/Win32 equivalent of WinForms "KeyPreview")

Question

I have an MFC dialog containing a dozen or so buttons, radio buttons and readonly edit controls.

I'd like to know when the user hits Ctrl+V in that dialog, regardless of which control has the focus.

If this were C#, I could set the KeyPreview proprety and my form would receive all the keystrokes before the individual controls - but how do I do that in my MFC dialog?

Answer 1

Add a handler to override PreTranslateMessage() in the dialog class, and check the details of the MSG struct received there. Be sure to call the base class to get the right return value, unless you want to eat the keystroke to prevent it going further.

Answer 2

JTeagle is right. You should override PreTranslateMessage().

// Example
BOOL CDlgFoo::PreTranslateMessage( MSG* pMsg )
{
  // Add your specialized code here and/or call the base class
  if ( pMsg->message == WM_KEYDOWN && pMsg->wParam == VK_RETURN )
  {
    int idCtrl= this->GetFocus()->GetDlgCtrlID();
    if ( idCtrl == IDC_MY_EDIT ) {
      // do something <--------------------
      return TRUE; // eat the message
    }
  }

  return CDialog::PreTranslateMessage( pMsg );
}