How to perform Click action on Button or Text field by pywinauto

Question

I'm using pywinauto to automation Click on some button on DiffDaff software.

My intention are:

• Step 1: Open DiffDaff software

• Step 2: Click 'About' button

  from pywinauto.application import Application
  
  app = Application.start("C:\Program Files\DiffDaff\DiffDaff.exe")
  
  app.About.Click()
  

But, I'm on stuck at step 2, and the console show error:

  File "build\bdist.win32\egg\pywinauto\application.py", line 238, in __getattr__
  File "build\bdist.win32\egg\pywinauto\application.py", line 788, in _resolve_control
pywinauto.findbestmatch.MatchError: Could not find 'About' in '['', u'DiffDaff - Compare Files, Folders And Web Pages', u'Internet Explorer_Hidden', u'DiffDaff - Compare Files, Folders And Web PagesDialog', 'Dialog']'

Where, '', u'DiffDaff - Compare Files, Folders And Web Pages', u'Internet Explorer_Hidden', u'DiffDaff - Compare Files, Folders And Web PagesDialog', 'Dialog' is the title of sotfware

Also, using the command 'app.dialogs.print_control_identifiers()' to know what exact position of 'About' button, there is the output:

Button - '&About'   (L750, T388, R834, B411)
    '&About' '&AboutButton' 'Button3'

But it's so difficult to understand the parameter as above (what/where is L750, T388,...) - Would you like to explain all the mean of parameters as above ?

And the way to perform 'Click' button ?

Thanks.

Answer 1

pywinauto requires 2-level hierarchy from Application object to control method. The structure of any call is

app.<DialogName>.<ControlName>.<method>(<params>)

In your case it should look like

app.Dialog.About.click()

If you need more realistic click, please use click_input() which moves cursor and clicks the control as user. click() only sends WM_CLICK and it's less reliable also.

print_control_identifiers() method prints the following information:

<ControlType> - '<Name a la WindowText>' (<rectangle>)
                possible names which are most likely useful for object attribute access

Mentioned code is equivalent to the following:

app.window(best_match='Dialog', top_level_only=True).child_window(best_match='About').click()

pywinauto simplifies such constructions by overriding __getattribute__ method.