====================
What is pywinauto
====================
(0.5.x releases are maintained by Intel Corporation, 2015)

© Mark Mc Mahon

Released under the LGPL v2.1 or later


:ref:`Full table of contents. <contents-root>`

What is it?
-----------
pywinauto is a set of python modules to automate the Microsoft Windows GUI.
At it's simplest it allows you to send mouse and keyboard actions to windows
dialogs and controls.


Installation
------------
- Install the following Python packages

  - *Required* pyWin32                    http://sourceforge.net/projects/pywin32/files/pywin32/Build%20219/

  - *Optional* Pillow (fork of PIL)          https://pypi.python.org/pypi/Pillow/2.7.0
  
- Download latest pywinauto from https://github.com/pywinauto/pywinauto/releases
- Unzip the pywinauto zip file to a folder
- Run ``python.exe setup.py install``

Installation in silent mode
------------
(Python 2.7, 3.1, 3.2, 3.3, 3.4, 3.5)

- Just run ``pip install pywinauto``


To check you have it installed correctly
Run Python ::

  >>> from pywinauto.application import Application
  >>> app = Application.start("notepad.exe")
  >>> app.UntitledNotepad.TypeKeys("%FX")


How does it work
----------------
A lot is done through attribute access (``__getattr__``) for each class. For example
when you get the attribute of an Application or Dialog object it looks for a
dialog or control (respectively).

::

 myapp.Notepad # looks for a Window/Dialog of your app that has a title 'similar'
               # to "Notepad"

 myapp.PageSetup.OK # looks first for a dialog with a title like "PageSetup"
                    # then it looks for a control on that dialog with a title
                    # like "OK"

This attribute resolution is delayed (currently a hard coded amount of time) until
it succeeds. So for example if you Select a menu option and then look for the
resulting dialog e.g. ::

  app.UntitledNotepad.MenuSelect("File->SaveAs")
  app.SaveAs.ComboBox5.Select("UTF-8")
  app.SaveAs.edit1.SetText("Example-utf8.txt")
  app.SaveAs.Save.Click()

At the 2nd line the SaveAs dialog might not be open by the time this line is
executed. So what happens is that we wait until we have a control to resolve
before resolving the dialog. At that point if we can't find a SaveAs dialog with
a ComboBox5 control then we wait a very short period of time and try again,
this is repeated up to a maximum time (currently 5 seconds!)

This avoid the user having to use time.sleep or a "Wait" function.

If your application performs long time operation, new dialog can appear or
disappear later. You can wait for its new state like so ::

  app.Open.Open.Click() # opening large file
  app.Open.WaitNot('visible') # make sure "Open" dialog became invisible
  # wait for up to 30 seconds until data.txt is loaded
  app.Window(title='data.txt - Notepad').Wait('ready', timeout=30)


Some similar tools for comparison
---------------------------------
* Python tools

  - PyAutoGui (https://github.com/asweigart/pyautogui)
  - AXUI (https://github.com/xcgspring/AXUI)
  - winGuiAuto (http://www.brunningonline.net/simon/blog/archives/winGuiAuto.py.html)

* Other scripting language tools

  - Perl Win32::GuiTest  (http://winguitest.sourceforge.net/)
  - Ruby Win32-Autogui (https://github.com/robertwahler/win32-autogui)
  - others (http://www.opensourcetesting.org/functional.php)

* Other free tools

  - AutoIt (http://www.autoitscript.com/)
  - See collection at: https://github.com/atinfo/awesome-test-automation

* Commercial tools

  - WinRunner (http://www.mercury.com/us/products/quality-center/functional-testing/winrunner/)
  - SilkTest (http://www.segue.com/products/functional-regressional-testing/silktest.asp)
  - Many Others (http://www.testingfaqs.org/t-gui.html)


Why write yet another automation tool if there are so many out there?
---------------------------------------------------------------------
There are loads of reasons :-)

**Takes a different approach:**
    Most other tools are not object oriented you end  up writing stuff like::

        window = findwindow(title = "Untitled - Notepad", class = "Notepad")
        SendKeys(window, "%OF")  # Format -> Font
        fontdialog  = findwindow("title = "Font")
        buttonClick(fontdialog, "OK")

    I was hoping to create something more userfriendly (and pythonic). For example
    the translation of above would be::

        win = app.UntitledNotepad
        win.MenuSelect("Format->Font")
        app.Font.OK.Click()


**Python makes it easy:**
    Python is a great programming language, but I didn't find
    any automation tools that were Pythonic (I only found one
    that was implemented in python) and I didn't care for it
    too much.


**Localization as a main requirement:**
    I work in the localization industry and GUI
    automation is used extensively as often all
    you need to do is ensure that your UI behaves
    and is correct with respect to the Source
    UI. This is actually an easier job then for
    testing the original source UI.

    But most automation tools are based off of coordinates or text of the
    controls and these can change in the localized software. So my goal (
    though not yet implemented) is to allow scripts to run unchanged
    between original source language (often English) and the translated
    software (Japanese, German, etc).

