Hello everyone,
my name is Michael, I'm the lead developer of a Python GUI automation library
for Windows called Automa: http://www.getautoma.com. We want to add some
features to our library but are unsure how to best expose them via our API. It
would be extremely helpful for us if you could let us know which API design
feels "right" to you.
Our API already offers very simple commands for automating the GUI of a Windows
computer. For example:
from automa.api import *
start("Notepad")
write("Hello World!")
press(CTRL + 's')
write("test.txt", into="File name")
click("Save")
click("Close")
When you execute this script, Automa starts Notepad and simulates key strokes,
mouse movements and clicks to perform the required commands. At the moment,
each action is performed in the currently active window.
We do not (yet) have a functionality that allows you to explicitly switch to a
specific window. Such a functionality would for instance make it possible to
open two Notepad windows using the start(...) command, and copy text between
them.
One API design would be to have our start(...) function return a "Window" (say)
object, whose methods allow you to do the same operations as the global
functions write(...), press(...), click(...) etc., but in the respective
window. In this design, the example of operating two Notepad windows could be
written as
notepad_1 = start("Notepad")
notepad_2 = start("Notepad")
notepad_1.write("Hello World!")
notepad_1.press(CTRL + 'a', CTRL + 'c')
notepad_2.press(CTRL + 'v')
The problem with this design is that it effectively duplicates our API: We want
to keep our "global" functions because they are so easy to read. If we add
methods to a new "Window" class that do more or less the same, we feel that we
are violating Python's principle that "There should be one - and preferably
only one - obvious way to do it."
An alternative design would be to make the window switching an explicit action.
One way of doing this would be to add a new global function, say "switch_to" or
"activate", that takes a single parameter that identifies the window to be
switched to. We could still have start(...) return a Window object, that could
then be passed to our function:
notepad_1 = start("Notepad")
notepad_2 = start("Notepad")
switch_to(notepad_1)
write("Hello World!")
press(CTRL + 'a', CTRL + 'c')
switch_to(notepad_2)
press(CTRL + 'v')
Maybe our Window objects could also be used as context managers:
notepad_1 = start("Notepad")
notepad_2 = start("Notepad")
with notepad_1:
write("Hello World!")
press(CTRL + 'a', CTRL + 'c')
with notepad_2:
press(CTRL + 'v')
As a final idea, switching could also be done as a method of the Window class:
notepad_1 = start("Notepad")
notepad_2 = start("Notepad")
notepad_1.activate()
write("Hello World!")
press(CTRL + 'a', CTRL + 'c')
notepad_2.activate()
press(CTRL + 'v')
It would be extremely helpful for us if you could let me know which way of
using the API you would prefer. If you opt for an explicit version, how would
you call the respective method? "activate" / "switch_to" / "focus" or something
else?
Thank you so much!
Best wishes,
Michael
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