On 25/12/16 01:21, Jim Byrnes wrote: > I am not trying to automate libreoffice using subprocess.
No, but you are trying to automate LO from within Python by sending it keystrokes and that's not easy. That's why I previously asked whether you really wanted to open the LO file directly and manipulate it from within Python - that's (slightly) easier than manipulating LO directly and much easier than manipulating LO from Python via keystrokes. > message I was told that subprocess was the way to open libreoffice from > a python script. Which is true if you want to bring up a LO session for your user to manipulate. But it's not the way to drive LO automatically. (One option is to start LO from Python then use macros within LO to do the automation - there may even be a command line switch to trigger a macro - I can't remember off hand) To drive LO via keystrokes your program needs to inject key/mouse events into the LO event queue. That's not easy and not very reliable either(*). There are some libraries that can help but it should be the path of last resort. (*)LO remembers its last screen setting and opens with them, if those screen settings are different than the ones you programmed for then navigation will be different and so on. That's easy to deal with for a human who can see the screen but sending keystrokes programmatically you are effectively trying to drive the system blindfolded! > Up until this point in the script I have used a combination of Selenium > and pykeyboard to log on to a web site and put some info in the > clipboard. Now I need to send keystrokes to libreoffice to paste from > the clipboard into the spreadsheet. Or you could just open the spreadsheet file directly and insert the data directly into it from Python. I think there is a library for that - there are several for doing it in Excel (so if your spreadsheet is in Excel format it is fairly easy). Or, if you can use CSV format, its just a standard library module. Alternatively you can use the LO API to directly inject the data into the spreadsheet objects (like using COM in Microsoft land). > I have used pyuno api to automate libreoffice in the past, but it was a > time consuming and confusing process. Trust me it is nowhere near as confusing and frustrating as trying to drive LO (Or any other GUI) via keystrokes! > I was trying this approach > because it looked like I could avoid the uno complexity. If there isn't a direct file manipulation library for LO spreadsheets then UNO is probably the easiest option. -- Alan G Author of the Learn to Program web site http://www.alan-g.me.uk/ http://www.amazon.com/author/alan_gauld Follow my photo-blog on Flickr at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/alangauldphotos _______________________________________________ Tutor maillist - Tutor@python.org To unsubscribe or change subscription options: https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/tutor
