it takes a lot of hacking around, but a rough solution is below:
#!python3
import win32gui, time
from win32con import PAGE_READWRITE, MEM_COMMIT, MEM_RESERVE, MEM_RELEASE, PROCESS_ALL_ACCESS, WM_GETTEXTLENGTH, WM_GETTEXT
from commctrl import LVM_GETITEMTEXT, LVM_GETITEMCOUNT, LVM_GETNEXTITEM, LVNI_SELECTED
import os
import struct
import ctypes
import win32api
GetWindowThreadProcessId = ctypes.windll.user32.GetWindowThreadProcessId
VirtualAllocEx = ctypes.windll.kernel32.VirtualAllocEx
VirtualFreeEx = ctypes.windll.kernel32.VirtualFreeEx
OpenProcess = ctypes.windll.kernel32.OpenProcess
WriteProcessMemory = ctypes.windll.kernel32.WriteProcessMemory
ReadProcessMemory = ctypes.windll.kernel32.ReadProcessMemory
memcpy = ctypes.cdll.msvcrt.memcpy
def readListViewItems(hwnd, column_index=0):
# Allocate virtual memory inside target process
pid = ctypes.create_string_buffer(4)
p_pid = ctypes.addressof(pid)
GetWindowThreadProcessId(hwnd, p_pid) # process owning the given hwnd
hProcHnd = OpenProcess(PROCESS_ALL_ACCESS, False, struct.unpack("i",pid)[0])
pLVI = VirtualAllocEx(hProcHnd, 0, 4096, MEM_RESERVE|MEM_COMMIT, PAGE_READWRITE)
pBuffer = VirtualAllocEx(hProcHnd, 0, 4096, MEM_RESERVE|MEM_COMMIT, PAGE_READWRITE)
# Prepare an LVITEM record and write it to target process memory
lvitem_str = struct.pack('iiiiiiiii', *[0,0,column_index,0,0,pBuffer,4096,0,0])
lvitem_buffer = ctypes.create_string_buffer(lvitem_str)
copied = ctypes.create_string_buffer(4)
p_copied = ctypes.addressof(copied)
WriteProcessMemory(hProcHnd, pLVI, ctypes.addressof(lvitem_buffer), ctypes.sizeof(lvitem_buffer), p_copied)
# iterate items in the SysListView32 control
num_items = win32gui.SendMessage(hwnd, LVM_GETITEMCOUNT)
item_texts = []
for item_index in range(num_items):
win32gui.SendMessage(hwnd, LVM_GETITEMTEXT, item_index, pLVI)
target_buff = ctypes.create_string_buffer(4096)
ReadProcessMemory(hProcHnd, pBuffer, ctypes.addressof(target_buff), 4096, p_copied)
item_texts.append(target_buff.value)
VirtualFreeEx(hProcHnd, pBuffer, 0, MEM_RELEASE)
VirtualFreeEx(hProcHnd, pLVI, 0, MEM_RELEASE)
win32api.CloseHandle(hProcHnd)
return item_texts
def getSelectedListViewItem(hwnd):
return win32gui.SendMessage(hwnd, LVM_GETNEXTITEM, -1, LVNI_SELECTED)
def getSelectedListViewItems(hwnd):
items = []
item = -1
while True:
item = win32gui.SendMessage(hwnd, LVM_GETNEXTITEM, item, LVNI_SELECTED)
if item == -1:
break
items.append(item)
return items
def getEditText(hwnd):
# api returns 16 bit characters so buffer needs 1 more char for null and twice the num of chars
buf_size = (win32gui.SendMessage(hwnd, WM_GETTEXTLENGTH, 0, 0) +1 ) * 2
target_buff = ctypes.create_string_buffer(buf_size)
win32gui.SendMessage(hwnd, WM_GETTEXT, buf_size, ctypes.addressof(target_buff))
return target_buff.raw.decode('utf16')[:-1]# remove the null char on the end
def _normaliseText(controlText):
'''Remove '&' characters, and lower case.
Useful for matching control text.'''
return controlText.lower().replace('&', '')
def _windowEnumerationHandler(hwnd, resultList):
'''Pass to win32gui.EnumWindows() to generate list of window handle,
window text, window class tuples.'''
resultList.append((hwnd, win32gui.GetWindowText(hwnd), win32gui.GetClassName(hwnd)))
def searchChildWindows(currentHwnd,
wantedText=None,
wantedClass=None,
selectionFunction=None):
results = []
childWindows = []
try:
win32gui.EnumChildWindows(currentHwnd,
_windowEnumerationHandler,
childWindows)
except win32gui.error:
# This seems to mean that the control *cannot* have child windows,
# i.e. not a container.
return
for childHwnd, windowText, windowClass in childWindows:
descendentMatchingHwnds = searchChildWindows(childHwnd)
if descendentMatchingHwnds:
results += descendentMatchingHwnds
if wantedText and \
not _normaliseText(wantedText) in _normaliseText(windowText):
continue
if wantedClass and \
not windowClass == wantedClass:
continue
if selectionFunction and \
not selectionFunction(childHwnd):
continue
results.append(childHwnd)
return results
w=win32gui
while True:
time.sleep(5)
window = w.GetForegroundWindow()
print("window: %s" % window)
if (window != 0):
if (w.GetClassName(window) == 'CabinetWClass'): # the main explorer window
print("class: %s" % w.GetClassName(window))
print("text: %s " %w.GetWindowText(window))
children = list(set(searchChildWindows(window)))
addr_edit = None
file_view = None
for child in children:
if (w.GetClassName(child) == 'ComboBoxEx32'): # the address bar
addr_children = list(set(searchChildWindows(child)))
for addr_child in addr_children:
if (w.GetClassName(addr_child) == 'Edit'):
addr_edit = addr_child
pass
elif (w.GetClassName(child) == 'SysListView32'): # the list control within the window that shows the files
file_view = child
if addr_edit:
path = getEditText(addr_edit)
else:
print('something went wrong - no address bar found')
path = ''
if file_view:
files = [item.decode('utf8') for item in readListViewItems(file_view)]
indexes = getSelectedListViewItems(file_view)
print('path: %s' % path)
print('files: %s' % files)
print('selected files:')
for index in indexes:
print("\t%s - %s" % (files[index], os.path.join(path, files[index])))
else:
print('something went wrong - no file view found')
so what this does is keep checking if the active window is of the class the explorer window uses, then iterates through the children widgets to find the address bar and the file list view. Then it extracts the list of files from the listview and requests the selected indexes. it also gets and decodes the text from the address bar.
at the bottom the info is then combined to give you the complete path, the folder path, the file name or any combination thereof.
I have tested this on windows xp with python3.4, but you will need to install the win32gui and win32 conn packages.