How to hide PhantomJS console when running a GUI app in Py2Exe?

Question

I made a program in wxPython and used py2exe to compile the software. When using the software functions that use PhantomJS, first a permission box opens, requiring permission, then a black console box appears over my GUI. It's certainly not professional. For those of you not familiar with PhantomJS, PhantomJS is an .exe that Selenium uses.

Is there anyway to hide the console from appearing when my customer is using my wxPython app? Perhaps something in the py2exe options?
Is there a way to use PhantomJS without having to ask the user for permission? Or at least change "PhantomJS requesting permission" to "My-software requesting permission". My customers don't really know what PhantomJS is so they all submit a ticket asking about it.

Thanks!

score 3 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 11:53

i dont even know what PhantomJS is but if it's an executable this may help.

I pipe to ffmpeg from wxPython app by using subprocess.Popen and set shell and creationflags option. Then I see no console for ffmpeg.

import subprocess
from win32process import CREATE_NO_WINDOW

p = subprocess.Popen(
            cmdstring, 
            stdin=subprocess.PIPE,
            bufsize=-1, 
            shell=False,
            creationflags = CREATE_NO_WINDOW
            )

(edit)

Like you wrote, there are two issues here. One is about UAC which is probably difficult to get around completely as explained here https://stackoverflow.com/a/131092/566035. But because you are anyway packaging with py2exe, you could try this py2exe packaging option: https://stackoverflow.com/a/1445547/566035.

windows = [{
    'script': "yourapp.py",
    'uac_info': "requireAdministrator",
},]

This line goes to the setup.py file of py2exe to package your application.

With this approach, the user will be asked for UAC permission only once when starting your wxpython app. And UAC will say that your application is requesting the permission (not PhantomJS).

Another is the console window which can be suppressed by CREATE_NO_WINDOW as I described above. To be more complete, I added an example that I took from http://phantomjs.org/quick-start.html

 phantomjs loadspeed.js http://www.google.com

To do this command from wxpython app, one can for example write a method of wx.Frame like:

 def OnButton(self, event):

      cmdstring = ('phantomjs.exe', 'loadspeed.js', 'http://www.google.com')
      p = subprocess.Popen(
            cmdstring, 
            stdout=subprocess.PIPE,
            shell=False,
            creationflags = CREATE_NO_WINDOW
            )

     print p.stdout.read()  # to get the output from phantomjs.exe

phantomjs.exe and loadspeed.js need to be in the system path or in the same folder. I did a test on my PC and it printed this as output.

 Loading time 719 msec

not in py2exe. If you can communicate with PhantomJS exe through PIPE, then you could rewrite the part of your wxpython app that uses PhantomJS like above. cmdstring will be the path to PhantomJS and all options to pass to it in a tuple. — otterb, Jul 29 '14 at 13:53
The _uac_info_ seemed to have worked. For the second part, here's how I use phantomjs in my code: `from selenium import webdriver` `driver = webdriver.PhantomJS("phantomjs.exe", desired_capabilities=dcap)` — User, Aug 04 '14 at 02:15
now i see the problem finally! it sounds like you need to go into the source code of selenium python binding. probably modify the line at 60 starting with `self.process = subprocess.Popen` of the source https://code.google.com/p/selenium/source/browse/py/selenium/webdriver/phantomjs/service.py — otterb, Aug 04 '14 at 10:49
Great thanks. Will do that now. I also want to mention, the console does not appear when I'm running in PyScripter, but it does when I compile with py2exe and run the exe. — User, Aug 04 '14 at 15:44

score 2 · Answer 2 · edited May 23 '17 at 11:53

I have been spending many hours to resolve this problem today and finally got a workaround.

As otterb mentioned, the devil is at the line 70 in the service.py of the Phantomjs driver.

However, I have no idea of what the module 'win32process' is and how to install it in Python. from win32process import CREATE_NO_WINDOW So, I could not set the creationflags as 'CREATE_NO_WINDOW'.

Thanks to Alex Martelli, he did provide an alternative here: Running shell commands without a shell window

Therefore, the modified codes should be:

self.process = subprocess.Popen(self.service_args, stdin=subprocess.PIPE,
                               close_fds=platform.system() != 'Windows',
                               stdout=self._log, stderr=self._log, creationflags=0x08000000)

Hope this could help anyone who has encountered the same problem.

win32 is bit tricky to install. but if CREATE_NO_WINDOW is all you need, you can just hard code it like `CREATE_NO_WINDOW = 134217728 `. this works as well. — otterb, Jun 15 '16 at 09:38

How to hide PhantomJS console when running a GUI app in Py2Exe?

2 Answers2