How do I read text from the clipboard

Question

How do I read text from the  windows  clipboard with python

User · Answer

If you don t want to install extra packages  ctypes can get the job done as well   import ctypes  CF TEXT   1  kernel32   ctypes windll kernel32 kernel32 GlobalLock argtypes    ctypes c void p  kernel32 GlobalLock restype   ctypes c void p kernel32 GlobalUnlock argtypes    ctypes c void p  user32   ctypes windll user32 user32 GetClipboardData restype   ctypes c void p  def get clipboard text        user32 OpenClipboard 0      try          if user32 IsClipboardFormatAvailable CF TEXT               data   user32 GetClipboardData CF TEXT              data locked   kernel32 GlobalLock data              text   ctypes c char p data locked              value   text value             kernel32 GlobalUnlock data locked              return value     finally          user32 CloseClipboard    print get clipboard text

User · Answer

Use Pythons library Clipboard    Its simply used like this   import clipboard clipboard copy  this text is now in the clipboard   print clipboard paste

User · Answer

You can use the module called win32clipboard  which is part of pywin32   Here is an example that first sets the clipboard data then gets it   import win32clipboard    set clipboard data win32clipboard OpenClipboard   win32clipboard EmptyClipboard   win32clipboard SetClipboardText  testing 123   win32clipboard CloseClipboard      get clipboard data win32clipboard OpenClipboard   data   win32clipboard GetClipboardData   win32clipboard CloseClipboard   print data   An important reminder from the documentation      When the window has finished examining or changing the clipboard    close the clipboard by calling CloseClipboard  This enables other   windows to access the clipboard  Do not place an object on the   clipboard after calling CloseClipboard

User · Answer

I ve seen many suggestions to use the win32 module  but Tkinter provides the shortest and easiest method I ve seen  as in this post  How do I copy a string to the clipboard on Windows using Python   Plus  Tkinter is in the python standard library

User · Answer

you can easily get this done through the built-in module Tkinter which is basically a GUI library  This code creates a blank widget to get the clipboard content from OS  from tkinter import Tk    Python 3  from Tkinter import Tk   for Python 2 x Tk   clipboard get

User · Answer

The most upvoted answer above is weird in a way that it simply clears the Clipboard and then gets the content  which is then empty   One could clear the clipboard to be sure that some clipboard content type like  formated text  does not  cover  your plain text content you want to save in the clipboard   The following piece of code replaces all newlines in the clipboard by spaces  then removes all double spaces and finally saves the content back to the clipboard   import win32clipboard  win32clipboard OpenClipboard   c   win32clipboard GetClipboardData   win32clipboard EmptyClipboard   c   c replace   n        c   c replace   r        while c find          -1      c   c replace            win32clipboard SetClipboardText c  win32clipboard CloseClipboard

User · Answer

Try win32clipboard from the win32all package  that s probably installed if you re on ActiveState Python    See sample here  http   code activestate com recipes 474121

User · Answer

The python standard library does it     try        Python3     import tkinter as tk except ImportError        Python2     import Tkinter as tk  def getClipboardText        root   tk Tk         keep the window from showing     root withdraw       return root clipboard get

User · Answer

For my console program the answers with tkinter above did not quite work for me because the  destroy   always gave an error       can t invoke  event  command  application has been destroyed while executing      or when using  withdraw   the console window did not get the focus back   To solve this you also have to call  update   before the  destroy    Example     Python 3 import tkinter  r   tkinter Tk   text   r clipboard get   r withdraw   r update   r destroy     The r withdraw   prevents the frame from showing for a milisecond  and then it will be destroyed giving the focus back to the console

User · Answer

I found out this was the easiest way to get access to the clipboard from python   1  Install pyperclip  pip install pyperclip  2  Usage   import pyperclip  s   pyperclip paste   pyperclip copy s     the type of s is string   Tested on Win10 64-bit  Python 3 5 and Python 3 7 3  64-bit   Seems to work with non-ASCII characters  too   Tested characters include         a      F

User · Answer

A not very direct trick   Use pyautogui hotkey   Import pyautogui pyautogui hotkey  ctrl    v     Therefore  you can paste the clipboard data as you like

[python] How do I read text from the clipboard?

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