Ytdyklly

How can I record keyboard actions with the timestamp, either to console, or preferably to a file?

I have showkey output like:

keycode  28 release

keycode  30 press

keycode  30 release

keycode  48 press

keycode  48 release

And I'd like it to be:

keycode  30 press 1551027529

keycode  30 release 1551027532

keycode  48 press 1551027534

keycode  48 release 1551027536

keycode  46 press 1551027542

keycode  46 release 1551027548

keycode  32 press 1551027549

keycode  32 release 155102751

I looked at How to modify output in bash command pipeline and have tried:

sudo showkey | awk -v date="$(date +%s)" '{print $1 date}'

And there is no output at all.

I've tried a while loop:

echo MY_PASSWORD | 

stdbuf -o0 sudo -S showkey |

while read line; 

do  



    echo "$line":$(date +%s)  >> /home/reedbear/user_scripts/output.txt; 





done

And my output shows the keypresses, but they all have the same time stamp, as I assume the while loop is evaluated with the full output of showkey when it is finished.

I don't know what stdbuf does, but I saw it somewhere last night. It does the same thing without it.

sudo showkey | awk -v date="$(date +%s)" '{print $1 date}'

This won't work, since you're running date once, before awk starts, so it will print the same value on all lines.

With GNU awk, you could use the systime() function to get the current time (in seconds since the Epoch). E.g. this works for me:

$ stdbuf -o0 showkey -a | awk '{ print $0, systime(); }'

 1551031085

Press any keys - Ctrl-D will terminate this program 1551031085

 1551031085

a        97 0141 0x61 1551031086

d       100 0144 0x64 1551031087

^D        4 0004 0x04 1551031088

(I can't test showkey with raw keycodes right now.)

I gave up on showkey and switched over to xev.

xev -id $(xdotool search -name "Stardew Valley") -event keyboard >> /home/reedbear/user_scripts/output.txt

This gets me logs that look like:

KeyRelease event, serial 18, synthetic NO, window 0x260000a,

    root 0x1b0, subw 0x0, time 18101865, (893,683), root:(893,683),

    state 0x10, keycode 38 (keysym 0x61, a), same_screen YES,

    XLookupString gives 1 bytes: (61) "a"

    XFilterEvent returns: False



KeyPress event, serial 18, synthetic NO, window 0x260000a,

    root 0x1b0, subw 0x0, time 18101865, (893,683), root:(893,683),

    state 0x10, keycode 38 (keysym 0x61, a), same_screen YES,

    XLookupString gives 1 bytes: (61) "a"

    XmbLookupString gives 1 bytes: (61) "a"

    XFilterEvent returns: False



KeyRelease event, serial 21, synthetic NO, window 0x260000a,

    root 0x1b0, subw 0x0, time 18102365, (893,683), root:(893,683),

    state 0x10, keycode 38 (keysym 0x61, a), same_screen YES,

    XLookupString gives 1 bytes: (61) "a"

    XFilterEvent returns: False

And then I use php, because I'm experienced with php, to pull the timestamp, keypress, and whether KeyRelease or KeyPress.

Then I'm using xdotool to send keypresses, but that's a separate thing.

I probably can do this without xdotool, but... I didn't.