How can I use Python (2.7) to read Windows notifications? - python

Is there a way to read in Windows system notifications (the bubble dialogs in the lower right hand corner of the screen) using Python? I am trying to read in the text of the notification as well as the time at which it was generated, but I've been unsuccessful in locating any information on how to do this.
I have found several resources over how to generate these notifications, such as this question: How to create a system tray popup message with python? (Windows), but nothing on how to read these popups if they are generated outside of Python.
Thanks in advance for your help!

Related

How can I click buttons in a windows GUI program using python?

I am writing a python script that automates running a program and performing different tasks within the program. My main problem is figuring out how to click buttons and interact with the GUI of the program to be controlled.
I am currently using the pyautogui library and using pyautogui.click(X,Y) to advance through prompts and click on different menus and menu items. The problem with this approach is that I am relying on a separate script to inform me of the coordinates of interest in my environment by telling me the coordinates of where my cursor is hovering. This probably will not work on other machines and just seems like a one case solution.
My question is how can I automate using a program in windows (clicking around) without having to hard code the exact position of the items I need to click?
For example, If I need to click a "ok" box to accept some setting, how can I make Windows grab the program window, read through the options and click what I need without any prior knowledge of the position of the dialog box and where the "Ok" button is located?
Code:
import pyautogui as gui
gui.click(x,y)
The way you can do this using pyautogui is with their locating methods. You will need a picture (for example of the OK box) and then you can have pyautogui find it on the screen and give you its coordinates. Check out the official documentation on this.

How to read text from an 'Edit' class UI control using pywinauto?

pywinauto and in-general noob here. I am currently working on reading communication back from a robot arm in response to automated commands being sent to it using the terminal window inside the K-IDE program (Kawasaki IDE) using pywinauto. Using win32 in py_inspect I was able to identify the UI control containing the rich text that I want to access (marked with red arrow in screenshot). I want to save the rich_text property (marked in purple) of that UI control to a text file to parse it. How to use pywinauto to achieve this?
Thank you in advance :)
Screenshot: py_inspect_ss
It should look like this:
from pywinauto import Application
app = Application(backend="win32").connect(title_re='Trying to connect to "Standard 1".*', top_level_only=False)
rich_text = app.window(title_re='Trying to connect to "Standard 1".*', top_level_only=False).rich_text()
Please comment under this answer if something is not working (maybe update the question with full traceback of error). A comment will notify me.

How do I open a gif in Python?

I'm wondering if it's possible to play an animated gif using Python. I'd just like to display a set of them and iterate at a certain interval. I'm wondering what the best route to take to open them in python. Is it possible to open with Preview (I'm using a Mac) or perhaps a web browser package?
You can do this using Tkinter library in python. You can even add buttons, labels etc..
More Information:
https://docs.python.org/2/library/tkinter.html#a-simple-hello-world-program
http://effbot.org/tkinterbook/photoimage.htm

Python Image processing screenshots

I'm trying to write a program than will detect when my mouse pointer will change icon and automatically send out a mouse click. Is there a better way to do this than to take screenshots and parse the image for the mouse icon?
EDIT:
I'm running my program on windows 7.
I'm trying to learn some image processing and make a simple flash game i made automated.
Rules: when the curses changes shape, click to get a point.
Also what imaging modules for python will allow you to take a specific size screenshot not just the whole screen? This question has moved to a new thread: "Taking Screen shots of specific size"
The way to do this in Windows is to install either a global message hook with SetWindowsHookEx or SetWinEventHook. (Alternatively, you could build a DLL that embeds Python and hooks into the browser or its Flash wrapper app and do it less intrusively from within the app, but that's much more work.)
The message you want is WM_SETCURSOR. Note that this is the message sent by Windows to the app to ask whether it wants to change the cursor, not a message sent when the cursor changes. So, IIRC, you will want to put a WH_CALLWNDPROC and a WH_CALLWNDPROCRET and check GetCursorInfo before and after to see if the app has done so.
So, how do you do this from Python? Honestly, if you don't already know both win32api and friends from the pywin32 package, and how to write Windows message procs in some language, you probably don't want to. If you do want to, I'd start off with the (abandoned) pyHook project from UNC Assist. Even if you can't get it working, it's full of useful source code.
You should also search SO for [python] SetWinEventHook and [python] SetWindowsHookEx, and google around a bit; there are some examples out there (I even wrote one here somewhere…)
You can look at higher-level wrapper frameworks like pywinauto and winGuiAuto, but as far as I know, none of them has much help for capturing events.
I believe there are other tools, maybe AutoIt, that have all the functionality you need, but not in Python module. (AutoIt, for example, has its own VB-like scripting language instead.)

making a python gui for ffdshow

I was thinking that for a learning project for myself, I would try to make a GUI for ffdshow on linux, using tkinter. Wanted to make sure this project would be feasible first, before I get halfway through and run into something that cant be done in python.
Basic idea is to have a single GUI window with a bunch of drop down boxes that have the various presets (like format or bitrate), as well as a text box where a custom number can be entered if applicable. Then when all the options are selected, the user hits the Start button on the GUI and it shows a progress little bar with a percentage. All the options selected would just send the relevant selections as cli arguments for ffdshow, and begin the conversion progress (essentially turning all the user's input into a single perfect cli command).
Is all this doable with python and tkinter? and is it something that a relative newb with only very basic tkinter experience could pull off with books and other python resources?
Thanks
That is precisely the type of thing that python and Tkinter excel at. And yes, a relative newbie can easily do a task like that.

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