call up an EDITOR (vim) from a python script

Question

I want to call up an editor in a python script to solicit input from the user, much like crontab e or git commit does.

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Answer 1

Calling up $EDITOR is easy. I've written this kind of code to call up editor:

import sys, tempfile, os
from subprocess import call

EDITOR = os.environ.get('EDITOR','vim') #that easy!

initial_message = "" # if you want to set up the file somehow

with tempfile.NamedTemporaryFile(suffix=".tmp") as tf:
  tf.write(initial_message)
  tf.flush()
  call([EDITOR, tf.name])

  # do the parsing with `tf` using regular File operations.
  # for instance:
  tf.seek(0)
  edited_message = tf.read()

The good thing here is, the libraries handle creating and removing the temporary file.