Dispatch simulated events

[kusanagi97]

Hi everyone.

I'm trying to build an helper tool in Java for an online game. It must display some popup menus (and little else) when I press some keys while playing. A native method (which I wrote myself) correctly returns to me data about the in-game pressed keys, as an array of KeyEvents.

Now, I need to dispatch them to my application, in a clean and safe way.

1 - What should I set as the source of the KeyEvent? (for KeyEvent.getSource())
2 - To what method should I pass the event? Is there a "global" method, or should I proceed component by component?
3 - My application is always in foreground (the user is supposed to be playing the game!). Does this bring up problems?

I tried to figure out it myself, but I'm confused by dozens of "postAwtEvent", "processAwtEvent", "dispatchAwtEvent" methods in dozens of Component classes and utility classes. And I'm concerned about the background/foregound problem as well.

Thanks in advance!

PS: Please, no java.awt.Robot tricks. They're not what I mean for "a clean and safe way".

[kusanagi97]

I found out this is the correct way to dispatch an awtEvent:

Toolkit.getDefaultToolkit().getSystemEventQueue().postEvent(awtEvent);

However, keyboard events don't get processed if the application is not focused. Is there a way I can bypass the KeyboardFocusManager? How should I implement my own?