J2SE: Taking screen snapshots in JAVA

As programmers many a times we need take snap shots of our screens. If we can take snap shot in java why use OS specific way to take a snap shot?
Here is a simple code example of taking snapshot in java (Either PNG format or JPEG format):

01 import java.awt.AWTException; 02 import java.awt.Dimension; 03 import java.awt.Rectangle; 04 import java.awt.Robot; 05 import java.awt.Toolkit; 06 import java.awt.image.RenderedImage; 07 import java.io.File; 08 import java.io.IOException; 09 import javax.imageio.ImageIO; 10  11 /** 12  * A Simple program that saves current screen snapshot. 13  * Supported formats png and jpg. 14  * Usage java ScreenSnapShot <<outputfilename>> 15  * 16  * @author Kumar Mettu 17  * @version 0.61 18  */ 19 public class ScreenSnapShot { 20  21     public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException,AWTException { 22  23         String saveFileName = "default.png"; 24         String saveFileFormat = "png"; 25  26         if (args.length > 0) 27             saveFileName = args[0]; 28  29         if (saveFileName.toLowerCase().endsWith(".png")) { 30             saveFileFormat = "png"; 31         } else if (saveFileName.toLowerCase().endsWith(".jpg") || 32                    saveFileName.toLowerCase().endsWith(".jpeg")) { 33             saveFileFormat = "jpg"; 34         } else { 35             System.err.println("Only png and jpg formats are supported."); 36             System.exit(1); 37         } 38  39         // get current sceen size for snapshot. 40         Dimension screenSize = Toolkit.getDefaultToolkit().getScreenSize(); 41         Rectangle screenRect = new Rectangle(screenSize); 42  43         // create current screen snapshot 44         RenderedImage image = (new Robot()).createScreenCapture(screenRect); 45  46         if (ImageIO.write(image, saveFileFormat, new File(saveFileName))) { 47             System.out.println("Screen snap shot is saved as :" + saveFileName); 48         } else { 49             System.out.println("Unable to save snap shot"); 50         } 51     } 52 }

This code requires J2SE1.4. There is no real use of this code unless you extend it to make use of it(like taking snapshots at fixed intervals etc...).

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