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.

Here\'s a snippet fr

Answer 1

In python3: 'str' does not support the buffer interface

$ python3 editor.py
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "editor.py", line 9, in 
    tf.write(initial_message)
  File "/usr/lib/python3.4/tempfile.py", line 399, in func_wrapper
    return func(*args, **kwargs)
TypeError: 'str' does not support the buffer interface

For python3, use initial_message = b"" to declare the buffered string.

Then use edited_message.decode("utf-8") to decode the buffer into a string.

import sys, tempfile, os
from subprocess import call

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

initial_message = b"" # 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()
    print (edited_message.decode("utf-8"))

Result:

$ python3 editor.py
look a string