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I am trying to do this in Python 2.7. I have found an answer for it in C# here, but I am having trouble recreating it in Python. The answer suggested here does explain the concept which I understand, but I have no idea how to get it going.

Basically I just want to mark a file, press Winkey+C and have its path copied. I know how to do the hotkey part (pyhk, win32 [RegisterHotKey]), but my trouble is working around with the filepath.

Thanks in advance!

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Guy Azu
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2 Answers2

5

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.

James Kent
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    also note that because this pulls the path from the address bar, this does not work on the desktop, unless you open the file explorer and point it at the desktop. and currently only handles single file selection – James Kent May 10 '17 at 12:51
  • for anyone interested I've now improved the answer to get multiple file selection and cleaned up some of the unnecessary commented out code – James Kent May 25 '18 at 07:19
  • I have to change code as mentioned below....EnumChildWindows(currentHwnd,EnumWindowsChildProc(_windowEnumerationHandler),childWindows) and I am getting error as ctypes.ArgumentError: argument 3: : Don't know how to convert parameter 3 with Python 3.7, Windows 10. Any suggestion would help. – BeHappy Jul 16 '19 at 23:41
  • None of that horrible hackery is necessary. Windows' Shell has a programming interface. See [A big little program: Monitoring Internet Explorer and Explorer windows, part 1: Enumeration](https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20130610-00/?p=4133) for an introduction. – IInspectable Aug 11 '22 at 06:54
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# Import Statement. import subprocess # Trigger subprocess. subprocess.popen(r'explorer /select,"C:\path\of\folder\file"'

Pablo Stark
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