Open file from windows file dialog with python automatically

Question

I do automated testing and get a file dialog. I want to choose a file from the windows open file dialog with python or selenium.

NOTE: The dialog is given by an other program. I don't want to create it with Tkinter.

The Window looks like:

THIS .

How to do this?

Possible duplicate of [Choosing a file in Python with simple Dialog](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3579568/choosing-a-file-in-python-with-simple-dialog) — Alvin Lindstam, May 04 '16 at 12:29
Selenium will not help you. Have you considered [tag:AutoIt], [tag:Sikuli], [tag:RobotFramework]. — SiKing, May 13 '16 at 15:34
Are you wanting to select a file at random, iterate through all of them, or select a particular file? — Keozon, May 13 '16 at 16:10

Rob · Accepted Answer · 2016-05-19T08:26:28.230

8

Consider using the pywinauto package. It has a very natural syntax to automate any GUI programs.

Code example, opening a file in notepad. Note that the syntax is locale dependent (it uses the visible window titles / control labels in your GUI program):

from pywinauto import application
app = application.Application().start_('notepad.exe')
app.Notepad.MenuSelect('File->Open')
# app.[window title].[control name]...
app.Open.Edit.SetText('filename.txt')
app.Open.Open.Click()

edited May 19 '16 at 08:26

answered May 18 '16 at 08:41

Rob

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I would add some piece of code from [SaveFromFirefox.py example](https://github.com/pywinauto/pywinauto/blob/master/examples/SaveFromFirefox.py) to your answer. – Vasily Ryabov May 18 '16 at 14:19

score 5 · Answer 2 · answered May 13 '16 at 16:06

You can use ctypes library.

Consider this code:

import ctypes

EnumWindows = ctypes.windll.user32.EnumWindows
EnumWindowsProc = ctypes.WINFUNCTYPE(ctypes.c_bool, ctypes.POINTER(ctypes.c_int), ctypes.POINTER(ctypes.c_int))
GetWindowText = ctypes.windll.user32.GetWindowTextW
GetWindowTextLength = ctypes.windll.user32.GetWindowTextLengthW
SendMessage = ctypes.windll.user32.SendMessageW
IsWindowVisible = ctypes.windll.user32.IsWindowVisible

def foreach_window(hwnd, lParam):
    if IsWindowVisible(hwnd):
        length = GetWindowTextLength(hwnd)
        buff = ctypes.create_unicode_buffer(length + 1)
        GetWindowText(hwnd, buff, length + 1)

        if(buff.value == "Choose File to Upload"): #This is the window label
            SendMessage(hwnd, 0x0100, 0x09, 0x00000001 )
    return True

EnumWindows(EnumWindowsProc(foreach_window), 0)

You loop on every open window, and you send a key stroke to the one you choose.

The SendMessage function gets 4 params: the window hendler (hwnd), The phisical key to send - WM_KEYDOWN (0x0100), The virtual-key code of tab (0x09) and the repeat count, scan code, extended-key flag, context code, previous key-state flag, and transition-state flag in the 4th argument.

You can also send key up, key down, chars, returns and etc... Use the documentation for help.

I used this as a reference: Win32 Python: Getting all window titles

Good luck!

Do you also can describe how to click on the first file? How do you get the element name? Thanks! — kame, May 20 '16 at 09:37

Open file from windows file dialog with python automatically

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