Keeping the terminal in focus

Question

I have a python script that uses selenium to automate a web page, focusing focus from the terminal where user input is required.

Is there anyway in python to switch focus to the terminal programmatically?

I will run my program on the Windows command line in Windows 7, if that matters, but the answer to the cross platform will be most useful.

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Attempts

Looking at the pywin32 package pywin32 for the win32 API, I have the following:

 import win32console import win32gui from selenium import webdriver as wd d = wd.Firefox() win32gui.SetFocus(win32console.GetConsoleWindow()) win32gui.FlashWindow(win32console.GetConsoleWindow(), False) input('Should have focus: ') 

SetFocus raises the pywintypes.error: (5, 'SetFocus', 'Access is denied.') due to Microsoft removing the focus feature from another application.

FlashWindow does nothing.

Answer 1

Here is what I came up with that seems to work.

 class WindowManager: def __init__(self): self._handle = None def _window_enum_callback( self, hwnd, wildcard ): if re.match(wildcard, str(win32gui.GetWindowText(hwnd))) != None: self._handle = hwnd #CASE SENSITIVE def find_window_wildcard(self, wildcard): self._handle = None win32gui.EnumWindows(self._window_enum_callback, wildcard) def set_foreground(self): win32gui.ShowWindow(self._handle, win32con.SW_RESTORE) win32gui.SetWindowPos(self._handle,win32con.HWND_NOTOPMOST, 0, 0, 0, 0, win32con.SWP_NOMOVE + win32con.SWP_NOSIZE) win32gui.SetWindowPos(self._handle,win32con.HWND_TOPMOST, 0, 0, 0, 0, win32con.SWP_NOMOVE + win32con.SWP_NOSIZE) win32gui.SetWindowPos(self._handle,win32con.HWND_NOTOPMOST, 0, 0, 0, 0, win32con.SWP_SHOWWINDOW + win32con.SWP_NOMOVE + win32con.SWP_NOSIZE) shell = win32com.client.Dispatch("WScript.Shell") shell.SendKeys('%') win32gui.SetForegroundWindow(self._handle) def find_and_set(self, search): self.find_window_wildcard(search) self.set_foreground() 

Then, to find the window and make it active, you can ...

 w = WindowManager() w.find_and_set(".*cmd.exe*") 

This is in python 2.7, there are also some links that I found to explain why you have to face such difficulties in switching active windows.

win32gui.SetActiveWindow () ERROR: The specified procedure was not found

Windows 7: how to bring a window to the foreground no matter what other window has focus?

Answer 2

This does not actually answer your question, but a simple solution is to not divert attention in the first place:

 driver = webdriver.PhantomJS() # ... 

PhantomJS web editor PhantomJS not have any user interface, so it does not steal focus.

Answer 3

To get focus, check out the comments of this answer .

A cross-platform method may be to use Tkinter for a custom GUI, as it has methods to capture and set focus for its windows.