[java] Is there a way to take a screenshot using Java and save it to some sort of image?

You can use java.awt.Robot to achieve this task.

below is the code of server, which saves the captured screenshot as image in your Directory.

import java.awt.image.BufferedImage;
import java.io.File;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.net.ServerSocket;
import java.net.Socket;
import java.net.SocketTimeoutException;
import java.sql.SQLException;
import java.text.DateFormat;
import java.text.SimpleDateFormat;
import java.util.Date;

import javax.imageio.ImageIO;

public class ServerApp extends Thread
{
       private ServerSocket serverSocket=null;
       private static Socket server = null;
       private Date date = null;
       private static final String DIR_NAME = "screenshots";

   public ServerApp() throws IOException, ClassNotFoundException, Exception{
       serverSocket = new ServerSocket(61000);
       serverSocket.setSoTimeout(180000);
   }

public void run()
   {
       while(true)
      {
           try
           {
              server = serverSocket.accept();
              date = new Date();
                  DateFormat dateFormat = new SimpleDateFormat("_yyMMdd_HHmmss");
              String fileName = server.getInetAddress().getHostName().replace(".", "-");
              System.out.println(fileName);
              BufferedImage img=ImageIO.read(ImageIO.createImageInputStream(server.getInputStream()));
              ImageIO.write(img, "png", new File("D:\\screenshots\\"+fileName+dateFormat.format(date)+".png"));
              System.out.println("Image received!!!!");
              //lblimg.setIcon(img);
          }
         catch(SocketTimeoutException st)
         {
               System.out.println("Socket timed out!"+st.toString());
 //createLogFile("[stocktimeoutexception]"+stExp.getMessage());
                  break;
             }
             catch(IOException e)
             {
                  e.printStackTrace();
                  break;
         }
         catch(Exception ex)
        {
              System.out.println(ex);
        }
      }
   }

   public static void main(String [] args) throws IOException, SQLException, ClassNotFoundException, Exception{
          ServerApp serverApp = new ServerApp();
          serverApp.createDirectory(DIR_NAME);
          Thread thread = new Thread(serverApp);
            thread.start();
   }

private void createDirectory(String dirName) {
    File newDir = new File("D:\\"+dirName);
    if(!newDir.exists()){
        boolean isCreated = newDir.mkdir();
    }
 }
} 

And this is Client code which is running on thread and after some minutes it is capturing the screenshot of user screen.

package com.viremp.client;

import java.awt.AWTException;
import java.awt.Dimension;
import java.awt.Rectangle;
import java.awt.Robot;
import java.awt.Toolkit;
import java.awt.image.BufferedImage;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.net.Socket;
import java.util.Random;

import javax.imageio.ImageIO;

public class ClientApp implements Runnable {
    private static long nextTime = 0;
    private static ClientApp clientApp = null;
    private String serverName = "192.168.100.18"; //loop back ip
    private int portNo = 61000;
    //private Socket serverSocket = null;

    /**
     * @param args
     * @throws InterruptedException 
     */
    public static void main(String[] args) throws InterruptedException {
        clientApp = new ClientApp();
        clientApp.getNextFreq();
        Thread thread = new Thread(clientApp);
        thread.start();
    }

    private void getNextFreq() {
        long currentTime = System.currentTimeMillis();
        Random random = new Random();
        long value = random.nextInt(180000); //1800000
        nextTime = currentTime + value;
        //return currentTime+value;
    }

    @Override
    public void run() {
        while(true){
            if(nextTime < System.currentTimeMillis()){
                System.out.println(" get screen shot ");
                try {
                    clientApp.sendScreen();
                    clientApp.getNextFreq();
                } catch (AWTException e) {
                    // TODO Auto-generated catch block
                    System.out.println(" err"+e);
                } catch (IOException e) {
                    // TODO Auto-generated catch block
                    e.printStackTrace();
                } catch(Exception e){
                    e.printStackTrace();
                }

            }
            //System.out.println(" statrted ....");
        }

    }

    private void sendScreen()throws AWTException, IOException {
           Socket serverSocket = new Socket(serverName, portNo);
             Toolkit toolkit = Toolkit.getDefaultToolkit();
             Dimension dimensions = toolkit.getScreenSize();
                 Robot robot = new Robot();  // Robot class 
                 BufferedImage screenshot = robot.createScreenCapture(new Rectangle(dimensions));
                 ImageIO.write(screenshot,"png",serverSocket.getOutputStream());
                 serverSocket.close();
    }
}