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how to print text in selected text box on windows [duplicate]

I need to do some macros and I wanna know what is the most recommended way to do it.
So, I need to write somethings and click some places with it and I need to emulate the TAB key to.

I do automated testing stuff in Python. I tend to use the following:
http://www.tizmoi.net/watsup/intro.html
Edit: Link is dead, archived version: https://web.archive.org/web/20100224025508/http://www.tizmoi.net/watsup/intro.html
http://www.mayukhbose.com/python/IEC/index.php
I do not always (almost never) simulate key presses and mouse movement. I usually use COM to set values of windows objects and call their .click() methods.
You can send keypress signals with this:
import win32com.client
shell = win32com.client.Dispatch("WScript.Shell")
shell.SendKeys("^a") # CTRL+A may "select all" depending on which window's focused
shell.SendKeys("{DELETE}") # Delete selected text? Depends on context. :P
shell.SendKeys("{TAB}") #Press tab... to change focus or whatever
This is all in Windows. If you're in another environment, I have no clue.

Maybe you are looking for Sendkeys?
SendKeys is a Python module for
Windows that can send one or more
keystrokes or keystroke combinations
to the active window.
it seems it is windows only
Also you have pywinauto (copied from my SO answer)
pywinauto is a set of open-source
(LGPL) modules for using Python as a
GUI automation 'driver' for Windows NT
based Operating Systems (NT/W2K/XP).
and example from the web page
> from pywinauto import application
> app = application.Application.start("notepad.exe")
> app.notepad.TypeKeys("%FX")
> app.Notepad.MenuSelect("File->SaveAs")
> app.SaveAs.ComboBox5.Select("UTF-8")
> app.SaveAs.edit1.SetText("Example-utf8.txt")
> app.SaveAs.Save.Click()

pyautogui is a great package to send keys and automate several keyboard / mouse related tasks. Check out Controlling the Keyboard and Mouse with GUI Automation and PyAutoGUI’s documentation.

You can use PyAutoGUI library for Python which works on Windows, macOS, and Linux.
Mouse
Here is a simple code to move the mouse to the middle of the screen:
import pyautogui
screenWidth, screenHeight = pyautogui.size()
pyautogui.moveTo(screenWidth / 2, screenHeight / 2)
Docs page: Mouse Control Functions.
Related question: Controlling mouse with Python.
Keyboard
Example:
pyautogui.typewrite('Hello world!') # prints out "Hello world!" instantly
pyautogui.typewrite('Hello world!', interval=0.25) # prints out "Hello world!" with a quarter second delay after each character
Docs page: Keyboard Control Functions.
More reading: Controlling the Keyboard and Mouse with GUI Automation (Chapter 18 of e-book).
Related questions:
Python GUI automation library for simulating user interaction in apps.
Python simulate keydown.

Two other options are:
pynput - https://pypi.org/project/pynput/ - which is for Windows (tested), Linux and MacOS- docs are at https://pynput.readthedocs.io/en/latest/
PyDirectInput - https://pypi.org/project/PyDirectInput/ - which is for Windows only and can be used with (or without) PyAutoGUI
Warning - if you are wanting to use keyboard control for games, then pynput doesn't always work - e.g. it works for Valheim, but not for the Witcher 3 - which is where PyDirectInput will work instead. I also tested PyDirectInput and it works for Half life 2 (as a test of an older game).
Tip - You will likely need to reduce (don't remove for games) the delay between character typing - use pydirectinput.PAUSE = 0.05
As an example, here is a function that allows virtual keyboard typing - currently only tested on Windows:
from pynput import keyboard
try:
import pydirectinput
pydirectinput.PAUSE = 0.05
except ImportError as err:
pydirectinput = False
print("pydirectinput not found:")
def write_char(ch):
upper = ch.isupper()
if pydirectinput and pydirectinput.KEYBOARD_MAPPING.get(ch.lower(), False):
if upper:
pydirectinput.keyDown('shift')
print('^')
pydirectinput.write(ch.lower(), interval=0.0)
print(ch)
if upper:
pydirectinput.keyUp('shift')
else:
keyboard.Controller().type(ch)
This allows a string to be sent in, with upper case alphabetic characters handled through pydirectinput. When characters don't simply map, the function falls back to using pynput. Note that PyAutoGUI also can't handled some shifted characters - such as the £ symbol, etc.

Accessing selection clipboard from ipython

I want to access the text in the clipboard from within ipython.
I got this far (not even sure if this is the best way, just found by poking around in ipython magics sources):
import IPython
from IPython.core.hooks import clipboard_get
ip = IPython.get_ipython()
my_string = clipboard_get(ip)
And it kinda works for stuff I've copied manually, but I want to get the "other" clipboard - the one you get when you use the middle mouse click. The selection buffer or whatever it's called.
Any ideas?

You can get X Window's "middle mouse button" selection (called the PRIMARY selection) through Tkinter:
import Tkinter # Replace "Tkinter" with "tkinter" for Python 3.x.
tk = Tkinter.Tk()
tk.withdraw()
print(tk.selection_get())
Another solution is to run xclip and get its output. (If you don't have xclip installed it can be found in most Linux distributions' package repositories.)
import subprocess
print(subprocess.check_output(['xclip', '-o', '-selection', 'PRIMARY']))

Global hotkey on windows with tkinter

I want a python tkinter application to register a global hotkey (triggered even if the application has not the focus). I've found some pieces, but I can't find a way to put them together...
Basically, I can register the hotkey (with a call to the windows API RegisterHotKey), but it send a "WM_HOTKEY" message to the root windows that is under Tkinter mainloop management, and I cant find a way to bind on it...
tk.protocol() function seems to be there for it, but this message seems not to be understood (I can't find a complete list of the recognized messages)...
Here a non-working code example where I would like to print a message when "WIN-F3" is pressed...
import Tkinter
import ctypes
import win32con
class App(Tkinter.Tk):
def __init__(self):
Tkinter.Tk.__init__(self)
user32 = ctypes.windll.user32
if user32.RegisterHotKey (None, 1, win32con.MOD_WIN , win32con.VK_F3):
print("hotkey registered")
else:
print("Cannot register hotkey")
self.protocol("WM_HOTKEY", self.hotkey_received)
def hotkey_received(self):
print("hotkey")
if __name__ == "__main__":
app = App()
app.mainloop()
try:
app.destroy()
except:
pass
Thanks
EDIT --------------------------------
OK, I found a way by pushing the whole windows loop in a separate thread, independent from the tkinter mainloop.
It doesn't feel like a clean solution though as I have actually 2 loops running for basically the same kind of interactions with the OS, and it require a message queue to interact with the application, but it do the trick...
If someone has a better option, I would be happy to see it...

A little bit late but maybe it would be helpful for someone... Read this answer.

Interacting with a gtk.container while gtk.main() is executing?

Experimenting with a battery monitor icon at the moment in Python using pygtk and egg.trayicon to create an icon to display a battery icon/tooltip.
I seem to be able to add the icon and the tooltip text, but when it then reaches the gtk.main() stage I need a way to modify these so it can then show the updated values.
I've tried gobject.idle_add() and gobject.timeout_add() without much luck, not sure where to go from this.
Anyone got any ideas?
EDIT: Perhaps not the clearest of questions.
I need to loop, fetching information from acpi while running and apply it to widgets inside the gtk container.
EDIT 2: Ok, it's properly down now. The issue was that I wasn't returning anything inside my callback. I just gave it "return 123" and now it's happily chugging away in my system tray, notifying me of my battery percentage :)

This example works for me:
# -*- Mode: Python -*-
# vi:si:et:sw=4:sts=4:ts=4
import gobject
import gtk
from egg import trayicon
label = gtk.Label("Over here")
def callback(widget, ev):
label.set_text("You found me")
def timeout():
label.set_text("What are you waiting for?")
tray = trayicon.TrayIcon("TrayIcon")
box = gtk.EventBox()
box.add(label)
tray.add(box)
tray.show_all()
box.connect("button-press-event", callback)
gobject.timeout_add(3000L, timeout)
gtk.main()
Without seeing your code, it's hard to tell what doesn't work.

Python Message Box Without huge library dependency

Is there a messagebox class where I can just display a simple message box without a huge GUI library or any library upon program success or failure. (My script only does 1 thing).
Also, I only need it to run on Windows.

You can use the ctypes library, which comes installed with Python:
import ctypes
MessageBox = ctypes.windll.user32.MessageBoxW
MessageBox(None, 'Hello', 'Window title', 0)
Above code is for Python 3.x. For Python 2.x, use MessageBoxA instead of MessageBoxW as Python 2 uses non-unicode strings by default.

There are also a couple prototyped in the default libraries without using ctypes.
Simple message box:
import win32ui
win32ui.MessageBox("Message", "Title")
Other Options
if win32ui.MessageBox("Message", "Title", win32con.MB_YESNOCANCEL) == win32con.IDYES:
win32ui.MessageBox("You pressed 'Yes'")
There's also a roughly equivalent one in win32gui and another in win32api. Docs for all appear to be in C:\Python{nn}\Lib\site-packages\PyWin32.chm

The PyMsgBox module uses Python's tkinter, so it doesn't depend on any other third-party modules. You can install it with pip install pymsgbox.
The function names are similar to JavaScript's alert(), confirm(), and prompt() functions:
>>> import pymsgbox
>>> pymsgbox.alert('This is an alert!')
>>> user_response = pymsgbox.prompt('What is your favorite color?')

A quick and dirty way is to call OS and use "zenity" command (subprocess module should be included by default in any python distribution, zenity is also present in all major linux). Try this short example script, it works in my Ubuntu 14.04.
import subprocess as SP
# call an OS subprocess $ zenity --entry --text "some text"
# (this will ask OS to open a window with the dialog)
res=SP.Popen(['zenity','--entry','--text',
'please write some text'], stdout=SP.PIPE)
# get the user input string back
usertext=str(res.communicate()[0][:-1])
# adjust user input string
text=usertext[2:-1]
print("I got this text from the user: %s"%text)
See the zenity --help for more complex dialogs

You can also use the messagebox class from tkinter:
from tkinter import messagebox
unless tkinter is that huge GUI you want to avoid.
Usage is simple, ie:
messagebox.FunctionName(title, message [, options])
with FuntionName in (showinfo, showwarning, showerror, askquestion, askokcancel, askyesno, askretrycancel).

This one with tkinter.
from tkinter import * #required.
from tkinter import messagebox #for messagebox.
App = Tk() #required.
App.withdraw() #for hide window.
print("Message Box in Console")
messagebox.showinfo("Notification", "Hello World!") #msgbox
App.mainloop() #required.