Simulate keystroke in Linux with Python

Question

How can I simulate a keystroke in python? I also want to press multiple keys simultaneously.

Something like:

keystroke('CTRL+F4')

or

keystroke('Shift+A')

Behring

May I ask why you want to do this? Also, under which environment? Command line? Graphical Desktop? – Aplacental

Answer 1

Although it's specific to X, you can install the xautomation package (apt-get install xautomation on Debian-based systems) and use xte to simulate keypresses, e.g.:

from subprocess import Popen, PIPE

control_f4_sequence = '''keydown Control_L
key F4
keyup Control_L
'''

shift_a_sequence = '''keydown Shift_L
key A
keyup Shift_L
'''

def keypress(sequence):
    p = Popen(['xte'], stdin=PIPE)
    p.communicate(input=sequence)

keypress(shift_a_sequence)
keypress(control_f4_sequence)

Marja

How can I send keys to the shell? – Lenten

Answer 2

Consider python-uinput and evdev. Example of shift+a with the latter:

from evdev import uinput, ecodes as e

with uinput.UInput() as ui:
    ui.write(e.EV_KEY, e.KEY_LEFTSHIFT, 1)
    ui.write(e.EV_KEY, e.KEY_A, 1)
    ui.syn()

Seneschal

I tried similar code, it is exeuted because I see in system log that a new virtual input device was created but the keystrokes do not appear in X? Any special thing can be done so the keys are received by X server? – Grimonia

The links are dead – Saddle

This is great! Note that 1 is a keydown event and 0 is keyup, so if you wanted to simulate a pressing and releasing a key more than once, you would need to place something like the following lines in a loop: ui.write(ecodes.EV_KEY, ecodes.KEY_DOWN, 1) #key down ui.write(ecodes.EV_KEY, ecodes.KEY_DOWN, 0) #key up ui.syn() – Prior

it gave me this error: UInputError: "/dev/uinput" cannot be opened for writing Any suggestion? – Schopenhauerism

Adding KERNEL=="uinput", MODE="0666 to the top of /etc/udev/rules.d/50-rogdrv.rules and reloading rules solves the problem" (github issue) You can reload udev rules like this # udevadm control --reload-rules && udevadm trigger (source) – Cornerstone

The example given only requires evdev. After I did pip install evdev, I pasted the example into a python3 interpreter. It worked straight away. It may have helped that I already had the uinput kernel module loaded.- modprobe uinput. – Yoshikoyoshio

Answer 3

python-uinput:

Pythonic API to Linux uinput kernel module...

Python-uinput is Python interface to Linux uinput kernel module which allows attaching userspace device drivers into kernel. In practice, Python-uinput makes it dead simple to create virtual joysticks, keyboards and mice for generating arbitrary input events programmatically...

Riggins

Can i emit in lowercase? please an example!! – Congruous

the link is dead – Saddle

Answer 4

If you plan to use it on Linux, try pyautogui library. For multiple keys you will need to use hotkey, e.g.:

pyautogui.hotkey('ctrl', 'c')  # ctrl-c to copy

For me it worked - see here: How to pass a keystroke (ALT+TAB) using Popen.communicate (on Linux)?

Relume

Works on windows as well. – Oldster

Answer 5

If you are on Windows, use Sendkeys and if on Linux, try out the suggestion given here for xsendkeys or pexpect.

Olive

Answer 6

Simplest solution I have found was using pynput. You could do the following:

from pynput.keyboard import Key, Controller

keyboard = Controller()
with keyboard.pressed(Key.ctrl):
   keyboard.press(Key.f4)
   keyboard.release(Key.f4)

Visigoth