java.awt.Robot equivalent?

[Christopher Koppler]

I need to simulate mouseclicks (in Win2K) in another application's
window. Googling threw up java.awt.Robot, and a bit of trial and error
showed that it could do what I needed (simulate a mouseclick on an
open window). However, I don't want to use Java (or Jython) if I can
avoid it, as I already have a Python 2.3 app, which works quite
nicely, thank you, and which needs to click into a foreign window.

Is this capability available in any of the GUI toolkits (searching
Tkinter docs brought up nothing)? Is there a C library that I could
wrap? Or maybe I just need to use the Windows extensions. But if so,
how - I don't have the slightest idea how that would work.

Anyone have any pointers?

--
Christopher

[Fredrik Lundh]

Christopher Koppler wrote:

> Is this capability available in any of the GUI toolkits (searching
> Tkinter docs brought up nothing)? Is there a C library that I could
> wrap? Or maybe I just need to use the Windows extensions. But if so,
> how - I don't have the slightest idea how that would work.
>
> Anyone have any pointers?

win32api's PostMessage might be useful. random google link:

http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-win32/2002-December/000635.html

</F>

[Thomas Heller]

"Fredrik Lundh" <fre...@pythonware.com> writes:

Other random resources:

Simon Brunning has written a 3-part details blog entry on
'automating the win32 gui'.

And there's a library named 'autoit' which can be driven by com.

Thomas

[Christopher Koppler]

On Fri, 12 Dec 2003 14:36:55 +0100, Thomas Heller <the...@python.net>
wrote:

<accent type="fake Finnish rock'n'roll">
Thank you very many, Fredrik, Thomas!
</accent>

Autoit does exactly what I need (click on a specific coordinate in a
canvas-like window), and finally a reason to learn to use ctypes,
too...

--
Christopher

[SBru...@trisystems.co.uk]

> From: Christopher Koppler [SMTP:klap...@chello.at]

> Autoit does exactly what I need (click on a specific coordinate in a
> canvas-like window), and finally a reason to learn to use ctypes,
> too...

You don't really need to use ctypes to drive AutoIt - it's COM scriptable.
Give me a shout if you want some examples of driving it - I'm sure I have
some somewhere around here...

But I gave up using it in the end, 'cos it was so fragile. If the wrong
window gained focus, the script would die. Besides, there are some controls
that it won't drive unless you are willing to resort to mouse clicks on
absolute positions, which is also fragile.

In the end, I just drove the Windows API directly. Yes, using ctypes a lot
of the time. ;-) You can find my current work in progress here:

http://www.brunningonline.net/simon/blog/archives/winGuiAuto.py.html

It's not far from being ready to go, actually. It just needs a few more
tests, some introductory docs, and an installation script. It's quite
useable, though - the functions themselves are well documented, and the test
script gives you a good high level introduction. We use it a lot.

Cheers,
Simon Brunning,
http://www.brunningonline.net/simon/blog/
--LongSig

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