Thread: How to check (reliable) if caps-lock is on?

Hi.

I want to find out whether caps-lock is currently enabled.
I already google searched and found this method:

		try {
			result = Toolkit.getDefaultToolkit().getLockingKeyState(KeyEvent.VK_CAPS_LOCK);
		} catch (UnsupportedOperationException e) {
			result = false;
		}

Unfortunately I also found out, that it doesnt always work on some platforms (*cough* windows *cough*). And, in fact, it does not work for me.
Source: Bug ID: JDK-4414164 Toolkit.getLockingKeyState() does not return caps lock state

So, I would like to ask if anybody knew a better way.

I could poll the keyboard state and keep track of caps-lock on my own, but I would like not to do this. There must be a better way.

Thank you very much.

With that library I would have to check manually, right? Poll the key state for the capslock-key periodically and use a boolean variable, correct?

Strange. I would have bet Java would be able to do this.

So, how does swing do it? Or does this bug affect swing as well?

I am just writing a little text component myself and would like to detect if capslock is enabled or not.

I see. Thank you for the help.