So I'm trying to create an automatic installer using Python. How would I go about interacting with native Windows applications that I launch? I am currently launching them using subprocess.call. Would I need to use Win32com? IronPython? Call a VB script from Python?
I've been trying to look into COM objects, but all I see are default Microsoft applications.
If the application supports COM, use COM using win32com. This tutorial helped me a lot. If it does not, you can use something like pywinauto or similar software. It is usually described as module for GUI testing. SendKeys comes handy for non-standard GUIs as a last resort.
Ranorex Spy is very helpful tool for identifying GUI elements.
Some of my colleagues also use compiled AutoHotkey scripts.
Related
I have the application installed on my windows PC, I want to launch that application using python and select dropdown options and do some other activities in that application.
I was able to launch the application using the os.system command, but I am not able to proceed further.
I want my program to do things like:
* select from a dropdown menu
* click on a button
How can my application control the user interface of another application?
Normally, an application exposes a user interface (UI) for users, and an application programming interface (API) for programming.
A human being uses keyboard and mouse to work with the user interface (UI)
An application uses programming to work with the application programming interface (API)
The UI is designed for humans, and the API is designed for computers.
It is sometimes possible to use programming to control the user interface of another program -- so your program acts as if it were using the keyboard and mouse. This technique is often called "UI automation", and programs that do it are sometimes called "robots".
It's a big topic, and it can be quite complex. It's almost always better to use an API instead if you can: it's faster, simpler, more reliable.
If you do need to use UI automation, there are a few different tools that can help.
You are asking about Python, so here are a few UI automation tools that work with Python:
AutoIT is a standalone product, but you can use Python to script it.
PyWinAuto is designed for use from Python.
Sikuli uses computer vision to find parts of the screen. I believe it comes with a recording tool as well.
Just to repeat: UI automation is weird and hard. If you can possibly use an API instead, your life will be much easier.
You need to install pywinauto package
Try the following code to run the .exe file
from pywinauto import application
app = application.Application()
app.start("Notepad.exe")
here you are:
(with os ^_-)
import os
os.startfile('your exe file address')
Based on a question I read and responded to on Reddit, I've been investigating using the relatively new Windows UI Automation framework via Python (and pywin32) to query custom widgets inside a Google Chrome window. UISpy shows me the control I'm interested in, but the naming conventions and lack of window classes make me believe the UI Automation framework is the only way to access it. I was able to get as far as generating a COM stub for the UI Automation library via PythonWin and the Makepy utility, but couldn't actually instantiate the COM object. I don't have a lot of experience with COM, outside of following along in Mark Hammond's "Python Programming on Win32" to drive Excel via COM with Python. I found an article describing how to instantiate the COM object from C/C++ but I wasn't able to get much from it.
I think I can follow along with the API documentation if I can just figure out how to instantiate the object.
You can use the awesome comtypes package to easily use the IUIAutomation COM interface from CPython scripts.
Here's a very simple demo I wrote:
https://github.com/billagee/test-polyglot/blob/master/printDesktopUiaElementName/ms-ui-automation-com-api/python/comtypes/print_desktop_uia_element_name.py
Try win32com.client.gencache, particularly GetModuleForCLSID(["e22ad333-b25f-460c-83d0-0581107395c9") - the clsid for the Win32 implementation of IUIAutomation.
I have my own application on python 2.7. I want to control an outside .exe application.
I'm able to launch such an application, klm.exe as:
from win32com.client import *
ExtApp = Dispatch("Wscript.Shell")
ExtApp.Run("E:\XYZ\ABC\klm")
But I want to have full control of this outside .exe application as it has tabs, radio buttons, push buttons, etc.
Is there a way to do so?
But I want to have full control of this outside .exe application as it has tabs, radio buttons, push buttons, etc.
Is there a way to do so?
Yes, multiple ways, depending on the application.
Since you're already using COM (although I'm not sure why you're using it just to launch apps)… does the app have a COM automation (IDispatch) interface? If so, there will probably be documentation showing how to use it from VB# (or VBScript or C# or …), which you can easily adapt to Python and win32com. (For an example of such an application, see the Outlook automation docs.)
If there's no COM automation interface, there may still be a lower-level COM interface, which is almost as easy to use via win32com, but it usually won't provide any access to the GUI controls; instead, you'll be talking to the same lower-level functionality that the GUI uses. (For a good example, see Apple's iTunes COM Interface.)
If there's no COM support at all, the simplest thing to do is to automate it via Windows WM_* events. There are some examples of doing that in the pywin32 documentation, but there are also a lot of higher-level wrappers, like AutoPy and pywinauto/swapy, and so on that will make things a whole lot easier. There are dozens of these, free and commercial, and even more if you're willing to step outside of Python and use a different scripting system, and SO is not a good place to discuss the pros and cons of each.
Finally, you can always ignore the app's windows and just automate the system mouse… but this is almost always a silly thing to do.
lately I have been trying to find a way to control applications on my ubuntu using python. What i want to achieve is something like what we can do with applescript in mac.... Control chrome send queries to it etc.
can someone please point me in the right direction as to how one can control applications using python, esp on Ubuntu...or a code snippet maybe?
Read about D-Bus: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D-Bus
Python dbus: http://dbus.freedesktop.org/doc/dbus-python/doc/tutorial.html
In order to control a process, it must be connected using dbus in the first place and exporting services. This is the same idea of AppleScript. On a mac, an application has to be exporting services that can be controlled over applescript.
PyQt/PySide has a DBus module as well: http://www.riverbankcomputing.co.uk/static/Docs/PyQt4/html/qtdbus.html
Have you taken a look at Project Sikuli?
I have an existing VS-2008 Windows application with back-end MySQL Server 5.5. The existing application uses Crystal Reports for reporting. I want to get rid of Crystal Reports and want to use another tool that seamlessly integrates with VS-2010 Express. I want to remove reporting options from my existing application and want to write a new WPF reporting application using VS-2010 Express. I want a free tool but as I am using MySQL, tools like SSRS are not useful for me.
What are the options? I am planning the other way round by writing a Python reporting application powered by any open-source Python reporting tool.
For WPF you can use http://wpfreports.codeplex.com/ for simple reports or follow this article instructions to make you own: http://janrep.blog.codeplant.net/post/WPF-Multipage-Reports-Part-I.aspx
I've used SSRS, but only the RDLC part (you can use it with any datasource), but not very happy with the results and WPF does not have a native RDLC ReportViewer.
Also check this related question What's the best approach to printing/reporting from WPF?
Why not have both? IronPython is a python implementation on top of .NET. It allows you to write code that is totally python, but gives you access to all of .NET, including WPF.
For a quick look at what this looks like, here is a basic WPF project using ironpython.