Develop Reference

Unable to click inside of a game window with pyautogui/win32api/pydirectinput

I can click on the window, but it doesn't move my character, or interact with anything in game. I've tried moving the mouse around, i've tried doing keyboard inputs, full screen, windowed, etc. I've also tried using screenshots with pyautogui, but no luck. The game i'm trying to use it with was initially released in 2000. Non coding wise i've tried running it as admin, running in windows xp sp 2-3 compatibility mode, disabling desktop composition, etc.
win32api code:
import win32api, win32con
import 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(573, 841)
# time.sleep(1)
# click(289, 342)
# time.sleep(1)
time.sleep(5)
click(319, 399)
x = win32api.GetCursorPos()
print(x)
error:
win32api.SetCursorPos((x,y)) pywintypes.error: (0, 'SetCursorPos', 'No error message is available')
pyautogui/pydirect input:
import pyautogui
import pydirectinput as p
import time
icon = pyautogui.locateCenterOnScreen('./icon.png', confidence=0.9)
p.click(icon[0], icon[1])
time.sleep(2)
p.press('enter')
this code doesn't throw an error, it completes normally without actually clicking in the game window

First, make sure you are running your script as admin, sometimes if you don't Windows will prevent mouse movement.
Also, try doing this:
def click(x,y):
win32api.SetCursorPos((x, y))
win32api.mouse_event(win32con.MOUSEEVENTF_LEFTDOWN, 0, 0)
time.sleep(.01)
win32api.mouse_event(win32con.MOUSEEVENTF_LEFTUP, 0, 0
You have to give it a little bit of time to click or else Python will do it too quickly and the game won't register it.

Simulating mouse click using python and win32api

I am trying to simulate a mouse left click on a window (Samsung Flow) but unfortunately it is not working. When I try on a google chrome window it works, but I have tried on Paint and on Samsung Flow but it does not work. Here is my code:
import win32api
import win32con
import time
import random
def enumHandler(hwnd, lParam):
if win32gui.IsWindowVisible(hwnd):
# if 'Stack Overflow' in win32gui.GetWindowText(hwnd):
if 'Samsung Flow' in win32gui.GetWindowText(hwnd):
print(win32gui.GetWindowText(hwnd))
for _ in range(50):
l_param = win32api.MAKELONG(random.randint(10, 500), random.randint(10, 500))
win32gui.PostMessage(hwnd, win32con.WM_LBUTTONDOWN, win32con.MK_LBUTTON, l_param)
time.sleep(0.1)
win32gui.PostMessage(hwnd, win32con.WM_LBUTTONUP, win32con.MK_LBUTTON, l_param)
time.sleep(0.1)
win32gui.EnumWindows(enumHandler, None)
I know that it detects the window as I am printing the detected text, but I do not know why it only work on the Chrome window.
Update
I have tried the following code, to search two windows notepad and browser:
import win32gui
import win32api
import win32con
import time
def enumHandler(hwnd, lParam):
if win32gui.IsWindowVisible(hwnd):
# if 'Notepad' in win32gui.GetWindowText(hwnd):
if 'Stack Overflow' in win32gui.GetWindowText(hwnd):
print(win32gui.GetWindowText(hwnd))
win32gui.SetForegroundWindow(hwnd)
win32api.SendMessage(hwnd, win32con.WM_CHAR, ord("c"), 0)
time.sleep(0.1)
win32gui.EnumWindows(enumHandler, None)
And the result was:
when using on the browser (searching for Stack Overflow window), the window came to foreground and printed the letter c
when using the notepad the window came to foreground but the letter was not printed! and I have no idea why.

Well, I found the problem.
With the example trying to send the letter C to notepad and the chrome browser I assumed that the first hwnd is the right one BUT in some cases, you have to interact with a child window. A window may have more than one child window, so, I will post a code here where you can find the window to interact with.
import win32gui
import win32con
import win32api
import time
def send_char(hwnd, lparam):
s = win32gui.GetWindowText(hwnd)
print("child_hwnd: %d txt: %s" % (hwnd, s))
win32api.PostMessage(hwnd, win32con.WM_CHAR, ord('c'), 0)
time.sleep(5)
return 1
def main():
main_app = 'Untitled - Notepad'
hwnd = win32gui.FindWindow(None, main_app)
if hwnd:
win32gui.EnumChildWindows(hwnd, send_char, None)
main()
With that you can find the child window that you should send the messages to (the code print the window id and name, send the character and wait 5 seconds, so when you notice the character on your window just get the last printed window id and use it instead of the parent window).
I hope it help someone facing the same problem.

Bring window to focus with python periodically

import win32gui
import time
def windowEnumerationHandler(hwnd, top_windows):
top_windows.append((hwnd, win32gui.GetWindowText(hwnd)))
if __name__ == "__main__":
top_windows = []
win32gui.EnumWindows(windowEnumerationHandler, top_windows)
for i in top_windows:
print(i)
if "zoom" in i[1].lower():
print(i, 'is found')
while True:
win32gui.ShowWindow(i[0],5)
win32gui.SetForegroundWindow(i[0])
time.sleep(1)
I've heard that zoom monitors whether the window is not in focus for more than 30 seconds, so I've been working on a way to repetitively throw it to the front while I work on other projects. The problem is the code raises an exception
0, 'SetForegroundWindow', 'No error message is available'
and the window just flashes yellow. Same problem with chrome as well. Would appreciate some help here :)

I had the same problem while I was trying to SetForegroundWindow(hwnd). The icon on the taskbar was just flashing, but the program stayed in the background. As you can read here:
https://learn.microsoft.com/zh-cn/windows/win32/api/winuser/nf-winuser-setforegroundwindow?redirectedfrom=MSDN
"An application cannot force a window to the foreground while the user is working with another window. Instead, Windows flashes the taskbar button of the window to notify the user."
For me helped:
import win32gui, win32com.client
shell = win32com.client.Dispatch("WScript.Shell")
shell.SendKeys('%')
win32gui.SetForegroundWindow(hwnd)

Standalone Gtk.Menu popup not working without event.time

I'm trying to port a program I made with pygtk, it's a popup menu launched via global shortcut (using keybinder) to run specific programs and commands. There is no main window in this program, the point is have a simple, fast and light "launcher" available anywhere, whenever I need it.
The old menu.popup used to work even when using 0 as event.time (since keybinder doesn't give an event I'd request a time for), but now I'm getting this error:
Warning: The property GtkStatusIcon:stock is deprecated and shouldn't be used anymore. It will be removed in a future version.
self.icon.new_from_stock(Gtk.STOCK_OPEN)
This is an example I made up to show the problem:
from gi.repository import Gtk, Gdk
from gi.repository import Keybinder
menu_shortcut = "<Super>m"
class TestMenu:
def __init__(self):
self.menu = Gtk.Menu()
item = Gtk.MenuItem('various items')
self.menu.add(item)
item = Gtk.MenuItem('Quit')
item.connect('activate', Gtk.main_quit)
self.menu.append(item)
self.menu.show_all()
self.icon = Gtk.StatusIcon()
self.icon.new_from_stock(Gtk.STOCK_OPEN)
self.icon.set_tooltip_text('MyMenu')
self.icon.connect('popup-menu', self.popup, self.menu)
Keybinder.init()
Keybinder.bind(menu_shortcut, self.popup, 0, 0, self)
def popup(self, widget, button, time, menu):
self.menu.popup(None, None, None, None, button, time)
menu = TestMenu()
Gtk.main()
With this example I'm able to click the status icon and get the menu, but the keyboard shortcut just gives me the aforementioned error.
Note: the stock icon doesn't work, I'm still learning the new API.

How to simulate a HOLD keydown event using pywin32?

I am trying to get this piece of python code to work on windows:
import win32process, win32con, win32gui, win32api, time
HWND = win32gui.GetActiveWindow()
win32api.PostMessage(HWND, win32con.WM_KEYDOWN, win32con.VK_SPACE, 0)
time.sleep(6)
win32api.PostMessage(HWND, win32con.WM_KEYUP, win32con.VK_SPACE, 0)
It is supposed to simulate someone holding down the space key, but it does not work and does not provide any sort of error message. I believe I may be doing something wrong with HWND, but I am not sure if that is the case.. I would like the event to be sent to any active window that I select to choose.
Can you help?
Solved my problem by using ctypes and the user32.keybd_event method.
ctypes.windll.user32.keybd_event(hexx[key], 0, 0, 0) #Key is down
ctypes.windll.user32.keybd_event(hexx[key], 0, 0x0002, 0) #Key is up