Is there a way to find the application name of the current active window at a given time on Mac OS X using Python?
This should work:
#!/usr/bin/python
from AppKit import NSWorkspace
activeAppName = NSWorkspace.sharedWorkspace().activeApplication()['NSApplicationName']
print activeAppName
Only works on Leopard, or on Tiger if you have PyObjC installed and happen to point at the right python binary in line one (not the case if you've installed universal MacPython, which you'd probably want to do on Tiger). But Peter's answer with the Carbon way of doing this will probably be quite a bit faster, since importing anything from AppKit in Python takes a while, or more accurately, importing something from AppKit for the first time in a Python process takes a while.
If you need this inside a PyObjC app, what I describe will work great and fast, since you only experience the lag of importing AppKit once. If you need this to work as a command-line tool, you'll notice the performance hit. If that's relevant to you, you're probably better off building a 10 line Foundation command line tool in Xcode using Peter's code as a starting point.
The method in the accepted answer was deprecated in OS X 10.7+. The current recommended version would be the following:
from AppKit import NSWorkspace
active_app_name = NSWorkspace.sharedWorkspace().frontmostApplication().localizedName()
print(active_app_name)
First off, do you want the window or the application name? This isn't Windows—an application process on Mac OS X can have multiple windows. (Furthermore, this has also been true of Windows for a few years now, although I have no idea what the API looks like for that.)
Second, Carbon or Cocoa?
To get the active window in Cocoa:
window = NSApp.mainWindow()
To get the name of your process in Cocoa:
appName = NSProcessInfo.processInfo().processName()
Edit: Oh, I think I know what you want. The name of the frontmost process, right?
I don't think there's a way to do it in Cocoa, but here's how to do it in Carbon in C:
ProcessSerialNumber psn = { 0L, 0L };
OSStatus err = GetFrontProcess(&psn);
/*error check*/
CFStringRef processName = NULL;
err = CopyProcessName(&psn, &processName);
/*error check*/
Remember to CFRelease(processName) when you're done with it.
I'm not sure what that will look like in Python, or if it's even possible. Python doesn't have pointers, which makes that tricky.
I know PyObjC would translate the latter argument to CopyProcessName into err, processName = CopyProcessName(…), but the Carbon bindings don't rely on PyObjC (they're part of core Python 2), and I'm not sure what you do about the PSN either way.
I needed the current frontmost application in a Python script that arranges the windows nicely on my screen (see move_window).
Of course, the complete credit goes to Peter! But here is the complete program:
#include <Carbon/Carbon.h>
int main(int, char) {
ProcessSerialNumber psn = { 0L, 0L };
OSStatus err = GetFrontProcess(&psn);
CFStringRef processName = NULL;
err = CopyProcessName(&psn, &processName);
printf("%s\n", CFStringGetCStringPtr(processName, NULL));
CFRelease(processName);
}
Build with gcc -framework Carbon filename.c
Related
I am developing a python script to drive a prototype I'm developing, and my current stumbling block is attempting to continuously write to the MouseSensitivity register in Windows. I'm using Windows 7, for specificity.
Unfortunately, I've hit some dead ends.
I've attempted to use pywin32 to write to the registry, but have not succeeded. After some searching, I've come across the SystemParametersInfo Function, but have not had any success with that either.
Essentially, for the purpose of solving this crisis, I've installed pyserial, pywin32, and ctypes (it appears that pywin32 may not be required). Assume I have an integer variable that will be between (and including) 1 to 20.
What I have for code right now is listed below. Much of it has been modified from here, as it appears that the author was using python, ctypes, user32.dll, and the SystemParametersInfo Function. However, when I run the code below, the shell enters a loop where the next line gets two tabs of space, and the cursor sits blinking until I keyboard interrupt. Any ideas?
import sys
import ctypes
import ctypes.wintypes
num = 12 # Between 1 and 20
SystemParametersInfo = ctypes.windll.user32.SystemParametersInfoW
SystemParametersInfo.argtypes = (
ctypes.wintypes.UINT,
ctypes.wintypes.UINT,
ctypes.c_void_p,
ctypes.wintypes.UINT,
)
SPI_SETMOUSESPEED = 0x0071
SystemParametersInfo(SPI_SETMOUSESPEED, 0, ctypes.cast(num, ctypes.c_void_p, 0)
How do I get the start/base address of a process? Per example Solitaire.exe (solitaire.exe+BAFA8)
#-*- coding: utf-8 -*-
import ctypes, win32ui, win32process
PROCESS_ALL_ACCESS = 0x1F0FFF
HWND = win32ui.FindWindow(None,u"Solitär").GetSafeHwnd()
PID = win32process.GetWindowThreadProcessId(HWND)[1]
PROCESS = ctypes.windll.kernel32.OpenProcess(PROCESS_ALL_ACCESS,False,PID)
print PID, HWND,PROCESS
I would like to calculate a memory address and for this way I need the base address of solitaire.exe.
Here's a picture of what I mean:
I think the handle returned by GetModuleHandle is actually the base address of the given module. You get the handle of the exe by passing NULL.
Install pydbg
Source: https://github.com/OpenRCE/pydbg
Unofficial binaries here: http://www.lfd.uci.edu/~gohlke/pythonlibs/#pydbg
from pydbg import *
from pydbg.defines import *
import struct
dbg = pydbg()
path_exe = "C:\\windows\\system32\\calc.exe"
dbg.load(path_exe, "-u amir")
dbg.debug_event_loop()
parameter_addr = dbg.context.Esp #(+ 0x8)
print 'ESP (address) ',parameter_addr
#attach not working under Win7 for me
#pid = raw_input("Enter PID:")
#print 'PID entered %i'%int(pid)
#dbg.attach(int(pid)) #attaching to running process not working
You might want to have a look at PaiMei, although it's not very active right now https://github.com/OpenRCE/paimei
I couldn't get attach() to work and used load instead. Pydbg has loads of functionality, such as read_proccess_memory, write_process_memory etc.
Note that you can't randomly change memory, because an operating system protects memory of other processes from your process (protected mode). Before the x86 processors there were some which allowed all processors to run in real mode, i.e. the full access of memory for every programm. Non-malicious software usually (always?) doesn't read/write other processes' memory.
The HMDOULE value of GetModuleHandle is the base address of the loaded module and is probably the address you need to compute the offset.
If not, that address is the start of the header of the module (DLL/EXE), which can be displayed with the dumpbin utility that comes with Visual Studio or you can interpret it yourself using the Microsoft PE and COFF Specification to determine the AddressOfEntryPoint and BaseOfCode as offsets from the base address. If the base address of the module isn't what you need, one of these two is another option.
Example:
>>> BaseAddress = win32api.GetModuleHandle(None) + 0xBAFA8
>>> print '{:08X}'.format(BaseAddress)
1D0BAFA8
If The AddressOfEntryPoint or BaseOfCode is needed, you'll have to use ctypes to call ReadProcessMemory following the PE specification to locate the offsets, or just use dumpbin /headers solitaire.exe to learn the offsets.
You can use frida to easy do that.
It is very useful to make hack and do some memory operation just like make address offset, read memory, write something to special memory etc...
https://github.com/frida/frida
2021.08.01 update:
Thanks for #Simas Joneliunas reminding
There some step using frida(windows):
Install frida by pip
pip install frida-tools # CLI tools
pip install frida # Python bindings
Using frida api
session = frida.attach(processName)
script = session.create_script("""yourScript""")
script.load()
sys.stdin.read() #make program always alive
session.detach()
Edit your scrip(using JavaScrip)
var baseAddr = Module.findBaseAddress('solitaire.exe');
var firstPointer = baseAddr.add(0xBAFA8).readPointer();
var secondPointer = firstPointer.add(0x50).readPointer();
var thirdPointer = secondPointer.add(0x14).readPointer();
#if your target pointer points to a Ansi String, you can use #thirdPointer.readAnsiString() to read
The official site https://frida.re/
I am using ImageMagick library with Python ctypes. I wrote a following simple code, but it crashes with segmentation fault (KERN_INVALID_ADDRESS) in Mac:
from ctypes import *
from ctypes.util import find_library
lib = CDLL(find_library('MagickWand'))
lib.MagickWandGenesis()
wand = lib.NewMagickWand()
lib.MagickReadImage(wand, 'mona-lisa.jpg')
lib.DestroyMagickWand(wand)
lib.MagickWandTerminus()
It works well in Linux and Windows both, but craches only in Mac OS X Lion. I built ImageMagick in various ways (official binary package, Homebrew, traditional ./configure && make), but it crashed for every trial.
Program received signal EXC_BAD_ACCESS, Could not access memory.
Reason: KERN_INVALID_ADDRESS at address: 0x00000000009a7638
0x000000010149a8d1 in MagickReadImage ()
Not only for MagickReadImage() function, IsMagickWand() function also crashes. I only guess NewMagickWand() returns a wrong pointer, or ctypes in Mac handles pointers incorrectly, but I’m not sure.
What’s wrong in this situation?
I changed the following code:
lib.MagickReadImage(wand, 'mona-lisa.jpg')
to:
f2 = lib.MagickReadImage
f2.argtypes = [c_void_p, c_char_p]
f2(wand, 'mona-lisa.jpg')
So, it works well.
Most likely this is a 32/64 bit issue. Is the Mac version the only 64 bit process that you've tested? Or perhaps you got lucky in the Windows and Linux versions in that they happen to return pointers of the form 0x00000000xxxxxxxx.
wand = lib.NewMagickWand()
NewMagickWand returns a pointer but you have not told ctypes to expect a pointer. As it stands ctypes defaults to a 32 bit integer for the return value. Add this line before you call NewMagickWand.
lib.NewMagickWand.restype = c_void_p
This tells ctypes that NewMagickWand returns a pointer.
I'm trying to maximize a specific window with python...
Here is the deal:
I have a script that opens 2 firefox windows (selenium rc), and I need to maximize the second window, the last one that opens...
How can I do it?
I'm using this command
window = win32gui.GetForegroundWindow()
win32gui.MoveWindow(window, 0, 0, 1440, 900, True)
that works perfectly, but only with the focus window... and the second window of firefox witch opens with the script doesnt get focused...
This should work
import win32gui, win32con
hwnd = win32gui.GetForegroundWindow()
win32gui.ShowWindow(hwnd, win32con.SW_MAXIMIZE)
If you don't want to install separate modules you could use the inbuilt ctypes module. The usage is not that different from the accepted answer above, except that you interact with the DLLs themselves and don't have to install anything else.
First here is the code:
import ctypes
user32 = ctypes.WinDLL('user32')
SW_MAXIMISE = 3
hWnd = user32.GetForegroundWindow()
user32.ShowWindow(hWnd, SW_MAXIMISE)
Now the explanation:
Get ctypes module.
Get the appropriate runtime, for reference use the Windows documentation and look under "Requirements".
Set the SW_MAXIMISE value to 3 since this is the value (indicated in the documentation) to set the window to maximum.
hWnd = user32.GetForegroundWindow() retrieves the foreground window (the window that is in front of all the others) - see here for the complete description on the function.
Use ShowWindow() to control the windows show state. This takes two arguments, the handle to the window (defined above as hWnd) and how the window should be seen (set as 3 in SW_MAXIMISE = 3). You can see the documentation for a more complete list of the various options.
You could of course put this into a function to make it easy to use.
Another approach:
Since in this case there are no worries about being cross platform, you could build a C or C++ extension instead.
Benefits:
no ctypes (which is sometimes worth considering, see the answers to this question)
Downfalls:
needs to be compiled (since it's on Windows only, you only need to worry about compiling for x32 bit and x64 bit)
must be a module (i.e. you can't intergrate it in one file)
requires a minimum knowlege of either C or C++ as well as the Python api itself
The actual function to be called should not be that difficult:
static PyObject * max_win(PyObject *self, PyObject *args) {
ShowWindow(GetForegroundWindow(), SW_MAXIMISE);
return Py_BuildValue(""); // Return nothing
}
Note that this is only a fragment of the actual code needed
Is there a way to dynamically call an Objective C function from Python?
For example, On the mac I would like to call this Objective C function
[NSSpeechSynthesizer availableVoices]
without having to precompile any special Python wrapper module.
As others have mentioned, PyObjC is the way to go. But, for completeness' sake, here's how you can do it with ctypes, in case you need it to work on versions of OS X prior to 10.5 that do not have PyObjC installed:
import ctypes
import ctypes.util
# Need to do this to load the NSSpeechSynthesizer class, which is in AppKit.framework
appkit = ctypes.cdll.LoadLibrary(ctypes.util.find_library('AppKit'))
objc = ctypes.cdll.LoadLibrary(ctypes.util.find_library('objc'))
objc.objc_getClass.restype = ctypes.c_void_p
objc.sel_registerName.restype = ctypes.c_void_p
objc.objc_msgSend.restype = ctypes.c_void_p
objc.objc_msgSend.argtypes = [ctypes.c_void_p, ctypes.c_void_p]
# Without this, it will still work, but it'll leak memory
NSAutoreleasePool = objc.objc_getClass('NSAutoreleasePool')
pool = objc.objc_msgSend(NSAutoreleasePool, objc.sel_registerName('alloc'))
pool = objc.objc_msgSend(pool, objc.sel_registerName('init'))
NSSpeechSynthesizer = objc.objc_getClass('NSSpeechSynthesizer')
availableVoices = objc.objc_msgSend(NSSpeechSynthesizer, objc.sel_registerName('availableVoices'))
count = objc.objc_msgSend(availableVoices, objc.sel_registerName('count'))
voiceNames = [
ctypes.string_at(
objc.objc_msgSend(
objc.objc_msgSend(availableVoices, objc.sel_registerName('objectAtIndex:'), i),
objc.sel_registerName('UTF8String')))
for i in range(count)]
print voiceNames
objc.objc_msgSend(pool, objc.sel_registerName('release'))
It ain't pretty, but it gets the job done. The final list of available names is stored in the voiceNames variable above.
2012-4-28 Update: Fixed to work in 64-bit Python builds by making sure all parameters and return types are passed as pointers instead of 32-bit integers.
Since OS X 10.5, OS X has shipped with the PyObjC bridge, a Python-Objective-C bridge. It uses the BridgeSupport framework to map Objective-C frameworks to Python. Unlike, MacRuby, PyObjC is a classical bridge--there is a proxy object on the python side for each ObjC object and visa versa. The bridge is pretty seamless, however, and its possible to write entire apps in PyObjC (Xcode has some basic PyObjC support, and you can download the app and file templates for Xcode from the PyObjC SVN at the above link). Many folks use it for utilities or for app-scripting/plugins. Apple's developer site also has an introduction to developing Cocoa applications with Python via PyObjC which is slightly out of date, but may be a good overview for you.
In your case, the following code will call [NSSpeechSynthesizer availableVoices]:
from AppKit import NSSpeechSynthesizer
NSSpeechSynthesizer.availableVoices()
which returns
(
"com.apple.speech.synthesis.voice.Agnes",
"com.apple.speech.synthesis.voice.Albert",
"com.apple.speech.synthesis.voice.Alex",
"com.apple.speech.synthesis.voice.BadNews",
"com.apple.speech.synthesis.voice.Bahh",
"com.apple.speech.synthesis.voice.Bells",
"com.apple.speech.synthesis.voice.Boing",
"com.apple.speech.synthesis.voice.Bruce",
"com.apple.speech.synthesis.voice.Bubbles",
"com.apple.speech.synthesis.voice.Cellos",
"com.apple.speech.synthesis.voice.Deranged",
"com.apple.speech.synthesis.voice.Fred",
"com.apple.speech.synthesis.voice.GoodNews",
"com.apple.speech.synthesis.voice.Hysterical",
"com.apple.speech.synthesis.voice.Junior",
"com.apple.speech.synthesis.voice.Kathy",
"com.apple.speech.synthesis.voice.Organ",
"com.apple.speech.synthesis.voice.Princess",
"com.apple.speech.synthesis.voice.Ralph",
"com.apple.speech.synthesis.voice.Trinoids",
"com.apple.speech.synthesis.voice.Vicki",
"com.apple.speech.synthesis.voice.Victoria",
"com.apple.speech.synthesis.voice.Whisper",
"com.apple.speech.synthesis.voice.Zarvox"
)
(a bridged NSCFArray) on my SL machine.
Mac OS X from 10.5 onward has shipped with Python and the objc module that will let you do what you want.
An example:
from Foundation import *
thing = NSKeyedUnarchiver.unarchiveObjectWithFile_(some_plist_file)
You can find more documentation here.
You probably want PyObjC. That said, I've never actually used it myself (I've only ever seen demos), so I'm not certain that it will do what you need.