How to Get Mouse Position in C++

This tutorial teaches how to get the mouse position in C++.

Get Mouse Position in C++

C++ provides a method, GetCursorPos, to get the x and y position of the mouse cursor. The method is very easy to use; we have to declare a Point and then pass it to the method, and the method will return the x and y points of the mouse position.

Let’s try an example using the GetCursorPos() method to get the mouse position in C++.

#include <windows.h>

#include <iostream>

using namespace std;

int main() {
  POINT MousePoint;
  if (GetCursorPos(&MousePoint)) {
    cout << MousePoint.x << "," << MousePoint.y << "\n";
  }
  return 0;
}

The above code will try to get the x and y points of the mouse cursor by analyzing the whole screen. See the output:

424,266

Getting the position of the mouse is usually required when we are working on developing a game or application, and the GameMaker:Studio will not allow us to access the mouse coordinates outside the given screen; in this case, we can use the code below to get the coordinates of the mouse.

#include <WinUser.h>
#include <Windows.h>
#define EXPORT extern "C" _declspec(dllexport)

EXPORT double GetMouse(double mode) {
  POINT MousePoint;
  GetCursorPos(&MousePoint);
  if (mode == 0) {
    double Mouse_X = MousePoint.x;
    return Mouse_X;
  } else {
    double Mouse_Y = MousePoint.y;
    return Mouse_Y;
  }
}

The above code uses WinUser.h, a child header of Windows, and it helps us get the mouse coordinates inside and outside the screen. See the output:

630,368