Copy highlighted text to clipboard, then use the c

Question

I'm trying to automate some actions in a browser or a word processor with pyautogui module for Python 3 (Windows 10).

There is a highlighted text in a browser.

text

the following script should print the highlighted text

import pyautogui as pya

# double clicks on a position of the cursor
pya.doubleClick(pya.position())

list = []
# a function copy_clipboard() should be called here
var = copy_clipboard()
list.append(var) 
print(list)

The output should be:

[text]

So how should the function copy_clipboard() look like? Thank you for your help.

Answer 1

The keyboard combo Ctrl+C handles copying what is highlighted in most apps, and should work fine for you. This part is easy with pyautogui. For getting the clipboard contents programmatically, as others have mentioned, you could implement it using ctypes, pywin32, or other libraries. Here I've chosen pyperclip:

import pyautogui as pya
import pyperclip  # handy cross-platform clipboard text handler
import time

def copy_clipboard():
    pya.hotkey('ctrl', 'c')
    time.sleep(.01)  # ctrl-c is usually very fast but your program may execute faster
    return pyperclip.paste()

# double clicks on a position of the cursor
pya.doubleClick(pya.position())

list = []
var = copy_clipboard()
list.append(var) 
print(list)

Answer 2

You could import pyperclip and use pyperclip.copy('my text I want copied') and then use pyperclip.paste() to paste the text wherever you want it to go. You can find a reference here.

Answer 3

Well... Here it is:

from tkinter import Tk

def copy_clipboard():
    clipboard = Tk().clipboard_get()
    return clipboard

Tk().clipboard_get() returns the current text in the clipboard.

And you need to use pyautogui.hotkey('ctrl', 'c') first.

Answer 4

What soundstripe posted is valid, but doesn't take into account copying null values when there was a previous value copied. I've included an additional line that clears the clipboard so null-valued copies remain null-valued:

import pyautogui as pya
import pyperclip  # handy cross-platform clipboard text handler
import time

def copy_clipboard():
    pyperclip.copy("") # <- This prevents last copy replacing current copy of null.
    pya.hotkey('ctrl', 'c')
    time.sleep(.01)  # ctrl-c is usually very fast but your program may execute faster
    return pyperclip.paste()

# double clicks on a position of the cursor
pya.doubleClick(pya.position())

list = []
var = copy_clipboard()
list.append(var) 
print(list)