Alright, I know this question looks like a duplicate, but I don't think it is. I've read other posts about fake key presses which involve ctypes and SendKey. However, I've tried these and they don't work quite as I want. I don't want something that is similar to an actual keystroke, I want something that does EXACTLY the same thing as a keystroke. I've run some tests with ctypes, and I noticed the key presses don't behave the same as a real keystroke.
For example, if I open up notepad and hold down the A key, I get one A character, and about a second later it starts filling up with As. When I run PressKey() for A, it types a single A and that's it. I still have to run ReleaseKey() for A after it so other programs don't get messed up.
I need some way to do something like realKeyPress('A') and have it behave exactly like I pressed the A key. Also, thanks guys, you're always so fast to respond with nice answers!
So I used ctypes after all. I modified the ctypes code after reading up on another answer similar to this topic. Here's the finished code:
import ctypes
import time
SendInput = ctypes.windll.user32.SendInput
# C struct redefinitions
PUL = ctypes.POINTER(ctypes.c_ulong)
class KeyBdInput(ctypes.Structure):
_fields_ = [("wVk", ctypes.c_ushort),
("wScan", ctypes.c_ushort),
("dwFlags", ctypes.c_ulong),
("time", ctypes.c_ulong),
("dwExtraInfo", PUL)]
class HardwareInput(ctypes.Structure):
_fields_ = [("uMsg", ctypes.c_ulong),
("wParamL", ctypes.c_short),
("wParamH", ctypes.c_ushort)]
class MouseInput(ctypes.Structure):
_fields_ = [("dx", ctypes.c_long),
("dy", ctypes.c_long),
("mouseData", ctypes.c_ulong),
("dwFlags", ctypes.c_ulong),
("time",ctypes.c_ulong),
("dwExtraInfo", PUL)]
class Input_I(ctypes.Union):
_fields_ = [("ki", KeyBdInput),
("mi", MouseInput),
("hi", HardwareInput)]
class Input(ctypes.Structure):
_fields_ = [("type", ctypes.c_ulong),
("ii", Input_I)]
# Actuals Functions
def PressKey(hexKeyCode):
extra = ctypes.c_ulong(0)
ii_ = Input_I()
ii_.ki = KeyBdInput( 0, hexKeyCode, 0x0008, 0, ctypes.pointer(extra) )
x = Input( ctypes.c_ulong(1), ii_ )
ctypes.windll.user32.SendInput(1, ctypes.pointer(x), ctypes.sizeof(x))
def ReleaseKey(hexKeyCode):
extra = ctypes.c_ulong(0)
ii_ = Input_I()
ii_.ki = KeyBdInput( 0, hexKeyCode, 0x0008 | 0x0002, 0, ctypes.pointer(extra) )
x = Input( ctypes.c_ulong(1), ii_ )
ctypes.windll.user32.SendInput(1, ctypes.pointer(x), ctypes.sizeof(x))