The window procedure of the window that has the keyboard focus receives keystroke messages when the user types at the keyboard. The keystroke messages are WM_KEYDOWN, WM_KEYUP, WM_SYSKEYDOWN, and WM_SYSKEYUP. A typical window procedure ignores all keystroke messages except WM_KEYDOWN. The system posts the WM_KEYDOWN message when the user presses a key.
When the window procedure receives the WM_KEYDOWN message, it should examine the virtual-key code that accompanies the message to determine how to process the keystroke. The virtual-key code is in the message's wParam parameter. Typically, an application processes only keystrokes generated by non-character keys, including the function keys, the cursor movement keys, and the special-purpose keys such as ins, del, home and end.
The following example shows the window procedure framework that a typical application uses to receive and process keystroke messages.
case WM_KEYDOWN:
switch (wParam)
{
case VK_LEFT:
// Process the LEFT ARROW key.
break;
case VK_RIGHT:
// Process the RIGHT ARROW key.
break;
case VK_UP:
// Process the UP ARROW key.
break;
case VK_DOWN:
// Process the DOWN ARROW key.
break;
case VK_HOME:
// Process the HOME key.
break;
case VK_END:
// Process the END key.
break;
case VK_INSERT:
// Process the INS key.
break;
case VK_DELETE:
// Process the DEL key.
break;
case VK_F2:
// Process the F2 key.
break;
// Process other non-character keystrokes.
default:
break;
}