print a string in an external application (python 3.1) - python

Suppose I have a game and a python script running. In this game, to speak you just type whatever you want and hit enter. This python script has a button on it that I want to output a predefined string into the game, and hit enter automatically (essentially, the button causes the character to speak the string). What would be the easiest way to implement this?
(just the actual 'send string to game and hit enter' thing, not the buttons and stuff)

Assuming your game is not running in the console (in that case you could use stdin), sendkeys might be an option on Windows. It allows you to send keystrokes to a certain window - in this case, the game window.
If the game is scriptable, you should of course use the game's own scripting options if available.

It depends on what hooks the game provides. If it doesn't provide any hooks, you may want to look into whatever your windowing system uses for automation. I've only done this sort of thing in Linux where I could use X's XTest extension (xte).

Related

Using Mac’s Dictation Inside Python

Does anyone have any ideas on how to use the Mac’s built-in dictation tool to create strings to be used by Python?
To launch a dictation, you have to double-press the Fn key inside any text editor. If this is the case, is there a way to combine the keystroke command with the input command? Something like:
Step 1: Simulate a keystroke to double-press the Fn key, launching the Dictation tool, and then
Step 2. Creating a variable by using the speech-to-text content as part of the input function, i.e. text_string = input(“Start dictation: “)
In this thread (Can I use OS X 10.8's speech recognition/dictation without a GUI?) a user suggests he figured it out with CGEventCreateKeyboardEvent(src, 0x3F, true), but there is no code.
Any ideas? Code samples would be appreciated.
UPDATE: Thanks to the suggestions below, I've imported AppScript. I'm trying the code to work along these lines, with no success:
from appscript import app, its
se = app('System Events')
proc = app.processes[its.frontmost == True]
mi = proc.menu_bars[1].menu_bar_items['Edit'].menus[1].menu_items['Start Dictation']
user_voice_text = input(mi.click())
print(user_voice_text)
Any ideas on how I can turn on the dictation tool to be input for a string?
UPDATE 2:
Here is a simple example of the program I'm trying to create:
Ideally i want to launch the program, and then have it ask me: "what is 1 + 1?"
Then I want the program to turn on the dictation tool, and I want the program to record my voice, with me answering "two".
The dictation-to-text function will then pass the string value = "two" to my program, and an if statement is then used to say back "correct" or "incorrect".
Im trying to pass commands to the program without ever typing on the keyboard.
First, FnFn dictation is a feature of the NSText (or maybe NSTextView?) Cocoa control. If you've got one of those, the dictated text gets inserted into that control. (It also uses that control's existing text for context.) From the point of view of the app using an NSTextView, if you just create a standard Edit menu, the Start Dictation item gets added to the end, with FnFn as a shortcut, and anything that gets dictated appears as input, just like input typed on a keyboard, or pasted or dragged with the mouse, or via any other input method.
So, if you don't have a GUI app, enabling dictation is going to be pointless, because you have no way to get the input.
If you do have a GUI app, the simplest thing to do is just get the menu item via NSMenu, and click the item.
You're almost certainly using some kind of GUI library, like PyQt or Tkinter, which has its own way of accessing your app's menu. But if not, you can do it directly through Cocoa (using PyObjC—which comes with Apple's pre-installed Python, but which you'll have to pip install if you're using a third-party Python):
import AppKit
mb = AppKit.NSApp.mainMenu()
edit = mb.itemWithTitle_('Edit').submenu()
sd = edit.indexOfItemWithTitle_('Start Dictation')
edit.performActionForItemAtIndex_(sd)
But if you're writing a console program that runs in the terminal (whether Terminal.app or an alternative like iTerm), the app you're running under has its own text widget and Edit menu, and you can parasitically use its menu instead.
The problem is that you don't have permission to just control other apps unless the user allows it. In older versions of OS X, this was done just by turning on "assistive scripting for accessibility" globally. As of 10.10, there's an Accessibility anchor in the Privacy tab of the Security & Privacy pane of System Preferences that has a list of apps that have permissions. Fortunately, if you're not on the list, the first time you try to use accessibility features, it'll pop up a dialog, and if the user clicks on it, it'll launch System Preferences, reveal that anchor, add your app to the list with the checkbox disabled, and scroll it into view, so all the user has to do is click the checkbox.
The AppleScript to do this is:
tell application "System Events"
click (menu item "Start Dictation" of menu of menu bar item "Edit"
of menu bar of (first process whose frontmost is true))
end tell
The "right" way to do the equivalent in Python is via ScriptingBridge, which you can access via PyObjC… but it's a lot easier to use the third-party library appscript:
from appscript import app, its
se = app('System Events')
proc = app.processes[its.frontmost == True]
mi = proc.menu_bars[1].menu_bar_items['Edit'].menus[1].menu_items['Start Dictation']
mi.click()
If you really want to send the Fn key twice, the APIs for generating and sending keyboard events are part of Quartz Events Services, which (even though it's a CoreFoundation C API, not a Cocoa ObjC API) is also wrapped by PyObjC. The documentation can be a bit tricky to understand, but basically, the idea is that you create an event of the appropriate type, then either post it to a specific application, an event tap, or a tap location. So, you can create and send a system-wide key-down Fn-key event like this:
evt = Quartz.CGEventCreateKeyboardEvent(None, 63, True)
Quartz.CGEventPost(Quartz.kCGSessionEventTap, evt)
To send a key-up event, just change that True to False.

Enter number inside textbox on website

I'm creating a script for a game because I want to automate a certain part of it. So far I have:
import win32api, win32con, time
def click(x,y):
win32api.SetCursorPos((x,y))
win32api.mouse_event(win32con.MOUSEEVENTF_LEFTDOWN,x,y,0,0)
win32api.mouse_event(win32con.MOUSEEVENTF_LEFTUP,x,y,0,0)
click(100,655)
time.sleep(3)
click(740,580)
time.sleep(1)
raw_input(100)
So far, I click on the correct page I need to go to, then I click on the textbox where I can enter a number, but after selecting the textbox I cannot quite figure out how to enter a number. I thought to use raw_input, but it has acted like a print statement instead.
The raw_input function isn't going to simulate keystrokes to another program. What it will do is print the prompt to its console, wait for you to type a response to that console, and return what you typed to your script. Completely useless here.
What you actually want is a way to send keyboard events to the app, the same way you're sending mouse events.
If you can depend on Windows Scripting Host being present (which I think is always there in Vista and XPSP3 and later, and can be installed for earlier XP), you can just use it instead of doing things at the low level:
wshell = win32com.client.Dispatch("WScript.Shell")
wshell.SendKeys("foo")
Otherwise, you'll need to get a handle to the window (that's explained in the win32api docs, so I assume you already know it) then something like this:
def sendkey(hwnd, keycode):
win32api.PostMessage(hwnd, win32con.WM_CHAR, keycode, 0)
This won't handle special keys like tab, escape, or return properly. For that, you need to instead send WM_KEYDOWN and WM_KEYUP. But for your use, WM_CHAR is what you want.
You also need a function to look up the keycode for each character in your string. For '100' it's actually just ord('1'), ord('0'), ord('0'), but that's not true for everything.
You may want to look at SendKeys and similar modules that wrap all of this up for you.
Or you may want to use a higher-level automation library like AutoPy (there are many of these, and if you search SO you'll find details about all of them).
Or you may want to forget about trying to automate the browser in terms of mouse clicks and key events and instead deal with it at the appropriate (web) level by using selenium.
Or you may want to forget about automating the browser and instead just simulate a browser in your own script by using mechanize.

Pygame: Graphical Input + Text Input

In Pygame, how can I get graphical input(e.g. clicking exit button) and also get input from the a terminal window simultaneously?
To give you context, my game has a GUI but gets its game commands from a "input()" command. How can I look for input from the command line while also handling graphics?
I'm not sure if this is possible, but if not, what other options do I have for getting text input from the user?
Thanks in advance.
You can't do that, unless you use the input command in a different thread, but then you have to deal with syncronization (which might be what you want or don't want to do).
The way I'd implement this is to create a kind of in-game console. When a special key (e.g. '\') is pressed you make the console appear, and when your application is in that state you interpreter key pressing not as in-game commands but... well, as text. You can print them in the console (using fonts). When a key (e.g "return") is pressed you can make the console disappear and the keys take back their primary functionality.
I did this for my pet-project and it works as a charm. Plus, since you are developing in python you can accept python instructions and use exec to execute them and edit your game "on fhe fly"

Specialized Text Console in wxPython

Is there any way that I can build an interactive text console using wxPython window application? It will be used to allow user to provide natural language input for the application to parse the grammar based on the language selected. It is not going to be used to run any shell or commands.
You can use a wx.TextCtrl for input and then when the user is done typing, you can have them press a button to do whatever checking you want done. Alternatively, you could use a wx.Timer to watch for idleness so when the user is idle for x seconds, it does the checking you want automatically too.

How to get in python the key pressed without press enter?

I saw here a solution, but i don't want wait until the key is pressed. I want to get the last key pressed.
The related question may help you, as #S.Lott mentioned: Detect in python which keys are pressed
I am writting in, though to give yu advice: don't worry about that.
What kind of program are you trying to produce?
Programas running on a terminal usually don't have an interface in which getting "live" keystrokes is interesting. Not nowadays. For programs running in the terminal, you should worry about a usefull command line User Interfase, using the optparse or other modules.
For interative programs, you should use a GUI library and create a decent UI for your users, instead of reinventing the wheel.Which wouldb eb etter for what you ar trying to do? Theuser click on an icon,a window opens on the screen, witha couple of buttons on it, and half a dozen or so menu options packed under a "File" menu as all the otehr windws on the screen - or - a black terminal opens up, with an 80's looking text interface with some blue-highlighted menu options and so on?. You can use Tkinter for simple windowed applications, as it comes pre-installed with Python + Windows, so that yoru users don't have to worry about installign aditional libraries.
Rephrasing it just to be clear: Any program that requires a user interface should either se a GUI library, or have a WEB interface. It is a waste of your time, and that of your users, to try and create a UI operating over the terminal - we are not in 1989 any more.
If you absolutely need a text interface, you should look at the ncurses library then. Better than trying to reinvent the wheel.
http://code.activestate.com/recipes/134892/
i think it's what you need
ps ooops, i didn't see it's the same solution you rejected...why, btw?
edit:
do you know:
from msvcrt import getch
it works only in windows, however...
(and it is generalised in the above link)
from here: http://www.daniweb.com/forums/thread115282.html

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