How to track a user's idle time

Suppose you have a data-critical type of application where you would not want a non-authored user to work with the data. Such an application could automatically log out the current user if no user activity has taken place in a lengthy time.

To track a user's idle time you could hook keyboard and mouse activity. Note, however, that installing a system-wide message hook is a very invasive thing to do and should be avoided if possible, since it will require your hook DLL to be loaded into all processes.

Another solution is to use the GetLastInputInfo API function (if your application is running on Win2000 (and up) machines).
GetLastInputInfo retrieves the time (in milliseconds) of the last input event (when the last detected user activity has been received, be it from keyboard or mouse).

Here's a simple example.

The SecondsIdle function returns a number of second with no user activity (called in an OnTimer event of a TTimer component).

function SecondsIdle: DWord;
var
   liInfo: TLastInputInfo;
begin
   liInfo.cbSize := SizeOf(TLastInputInfo) ;
   GetLastInputInfo(liInfo) ;
   Result := (GetTickCount - liInfo.dwTime) DIV 1000;
end;

procedure TForm1.Timer1Timer(Sender: TObject) ;
begin
   Caption := Format('System IDLE last %d seconds', [SecondsIdle]) ;
end;