How to retrieve the selected text from the active window

Question

I am trying to create a simple open source utility for windows using Python that can perform user-defined actions on the selected text of the currently acti

Answer 1

You're far better off using the Ctrl-C method. Fetching text directly will work for something like an edit control, but is useless for retrieving text that an application has painted directly on its own window.

Answer 2

It won't be trivial but here is the starting point

import win32gui
hwnd = win32gui.GetForegroundWindow()
print win32gui.GetWindowText(hwnd)

Maybe you will have to use FindWindow,FindWindowEx to get child windows with focus

edit: also while experimenting use spy++ to see how it retrieves information about various windows, see hwnd, window class etc

basically if you can find a example in C/C++/C# it won't be difficult to translate that into pywin32 equivalent, so in a way it is win32 api specific question

Answer 3

It appears that while the clipboard and associated copy and paste shortcuts are ubiquitous, they must be added to applications by developers. The best bet is to use a listener to capture when ctrl+c is activated, check that the clipboard is not in use and has data on it, and then manipulate the data from there. You can check out Microsoft's dev page here.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/dataxchg/using-the-clipboard#implementing-the-cut-copy-and-paste-commands

Answer 4

the code below will work only on simple text boxes (just did it in VB6, and ported to python)

edit: it was tested only on python 2.6

from ctypes import *
import win32gui
import win32api
import win32con


user32 = windll.user32
kernel32 = windll.kernel32

class RECT(Structure):
 _fields_ = [
     ("left", c_ulong),
     ("top", c_ulong),
     ("right", c_ulong),
     ("bottom", c_ulong)
 ]

class GUITHREADINFO(Structure):
 _fields_ = [
     ("cbSize", c_ulong),
     ("flags", c_ulong),
     ("hwndActive", c_ulong),
     ("hwndFocus", c_ulong),
     ("hwndCapture", c_ulong),
     ("hwndMenuOwner", c_ulong),
     ("hwndMoveSize", c_ulong),
     ("hwndCaret", c_ulong),
     ("rcCaret", RECT)
 ]



def get_selected_text_from_front_window(): # As String
    ''' vb6 to python translation '''

    gui = GUITHREADINFO(cbSize=sizeof(GUITHREADINFO))
    txt=''
    ast_Clipboard_Obj=None
    Last_Clipboard_Temp = -1


    user32.GetGUIThreadInfo(0, byref(gui))

    txt = GetCaretWindowText(gui.hwndCaret, True)

    '''
    if Txt = "" Then
        LastClipboardClip = ""
        Last_Clipboard_Obj = GetClipboard
        Last_Clipboard_Temp = LastClipboardFormat
        SendKeys "^(c)"
        GetClipboard
        Txt = LastClipboardClip
        if LastClipboardClip <> "" Then Txt = LastClipboardClip
        RestoreClipboard Last_Clipboard_Obj, Last_Clipboard_Temp
        print "clbrd: " + Txt
    End If
    '''    
    return txt



def GetCaretWindowText(hWndCaret, Selected = False): # As String

    startpos =0
    endpos =0

    txt = ""

    if hWndCaret:

        buf_size = 1 + win32gui.SendMessage(hWndCaret, win32con.WM_GETTEXTLENGTH, 0, 0)
        if buf_size:
            buffer = win32gui.PyMakeBuffer(buf_size)
            win32gui.SendMessage(hWndCaret, win32con.WM_GETTEXT, buf_size, buffer)
            txt = buffer[:buf_size]

        if Selected and buf_size:
            selinfo  = win32gui.SendMessage(hWndCaret, win32con.EM_GETSEL, 0, 0)
            endpos   = win32api.HIWORD(selinfo)
            startpos = win32api.LOWORD(selinfo)
            return txt[startpos: endpos]

    return txt

if __name__ == '__main__':
    print get_selected_text_from_front_window()