Metadata-Version: 2.4
Name: pyguitest
Version: 0.10.1
Summary: Cross-platform GUI automation; successor to X11::GUITest
Author: Dennis K. Paulsen
License-Expression: GPL-2.0-or-later
Project-URL: homepage, https://github.com/ctrondlp/pyguitest
Project-URL: repository, https://github.com/ctrondlp/pyguitest
Project-URL: issues, https://github.com/ctrondlp/pyguitest/issues
Project-URL: documentation, https://github.com/ctrondlp/pyguitest/tree/main/docs
Project-URL: changelog, https://github.com/ctrondlp/pyguitest/blob/main/CHANGELOG.md
Keywords: gui-automation,testing,x11,wayland,accessibility,atspi
Classifier: Development Status :: 4 - Beta
Classifier: Intended Audience :: Developers
Classifier: Operating System :: POSIX :: Linux
Classifier: Operating System :: POSIX :: BSD :: FreeBSD
Classifier: Operating System :: POSIX
Classifier: Programming Language :: Python :: 3
Classifier: Programming Language :: Python :: 3.10
Classifier: Programming Language :: Python :: 3.11
Classifier: Programming Language :: Python :: 3.12
Classifier: Programming Language :: Python :: 3.13
Classifier: Programming Language :: Python :: 3.14
Classifier: Programming Language :: Python :: 3 :: Only
Classifier: Environment :: X11 Applications
Classifier: Topic :: Desktop Environment
Classifier: Topic :: Software Development :: Testing
Classifier: Topic :: Software Development :: Quality Assurance
Classifier: Typing :: Typed
Requires-Python: >=3.10
Description-Content-Type: text/markdown
License-File: LICENSE
Provides-Extra: atspi
Requires-Dist: dogtail>=2.0; extra == "atspi"
Provides-Extra: x11
Requires-Dist: python-xlib>=0.33; extra == "x11"
Provides-Extra: uinput
Requires-Dist: evdev>=1.9; extra == "uinput"
Provides-Extra: eiinput
Requires-Dist: python-libei[portal]>=0.5.1; extra == "eiinput"
Provides-Extra: dev
Requires-Dist: pytest>=7; extra == "dev"
Requires-Dist: ruff>=0.6; extra == "dev"
Requires-Dist: mypy>=1.11; extra == "dev"
Requires-Dist: python-dbusmock>=0.30; extra == "dev"
Dynamic: license-file

# pyguitest

**Python GUI automation for real desktop applications.**

Automate and test Linux and BSD desktop applications from Python — even when
the application has no automation API.

Pyguitest provides one Python API for mouse, keyboard, window, screenshot, and
accessible UI automation across Wayland, X11, and XWayland. It is the Python
successor to [X11::GUITest](https://metacpan.org/pod/X11::GUITest).

Use it to:

- 🧪 Build reliable desktop GUI tests
- 🤖 Automate repetitive desktop tasks
- 🖱️ Control applications like a real user
- 🔎 Find and interact with accessible UI elements
- 📸 Capture screenshots and failure artifacts
- 🧰 Diagnose desktop automation environments
- 🔄 Modernize applications and test suites built around older X11 automation
  tools
- 🎬 Choreograph screen action for film, TV and stage — a character's typing
  and clicking, landing on cue

**Status:** every capability implemented across all backends, covering
**every X11::GUITest export**. Much of it has been run against real GNOME
Wayland and X11 sessions; some of it has not, and
[docs/validation.md](docs/validation.md) says exactly which is which, so
nothing here has to be taken on trust.

Because desktops differ in what they permit, what a session can do is
discovered at runtime rather than assumed — `gui.supports(...)` is how you
ask, and [docs/developers/design.md](docs/developers/design.md) is why the
API is shaped that way instead of being a one-to-one port.

**New here?** [docs/getting-started.md](docs/getting-started.md) is five
minutes from nothing to a working script. [docs/recipes.md](docs/recipes.md)
answers "how do I…", and [docs/troubleshooting.md](docs/troubleshooting.md)
answers "why didn't that work".

## Install

Requires Python 3.10 or newer.

```sh
pip install pyguitest              # core; no dependencies
pip install 'pyguitest[atspi]'     # + element automation
```

Or from a checkout, which is the same thing with a path instead of a name:

```sh
git clone https://github.com/ctrondlp/pyguitest.git
cd pyguitest
pip install .
pip install '.[atspi]'
```

You do not need `-e`; that flag is for developing *this package*, and is
covered in [CONTRIBUTING.md](CONTRIBUTING.md).

**None are required.** The package imports and runs with nothing else
installed. What you add depends on which backend has to serve your desktop
— extras (`atspi`, `x11`, `uinput`, `eiinput`, `dev`), a few distribution
packages pip cannot supply, and sometimes a tool on `PATH`. Rather than work
that out from a document, ask the machine:

```sh
pyguitest doctor
```

It detects your distribution and prints the exact commands. For the whole
picture — a per-backend requirements matrix, the distribution package table,
and how capture chooses a path — see [docs/install.md](docs/install.md).
Injecting input has its own setup (`/dev/uinput` permissions, the `ydotool`
daemon, libei, portal consent): [docs/input.md](docs/input.md).

## Usage

```python
import pyguitest

gui = pyguitest.connect()

# Widgets by what they are and what they are called -- the recommended way.
gui.button("OK").click()
gui.text_field("Name").set_text("Ada Lovelace")
gui.dropdown("Country").choose("Norway")

# Windows by title -- a plain string, or a compiled regex -- and by app id,
# which is what survives a title that changes with the document.
window = gui.find_window("Editor")
editor = gui.find_window(app_id="org.gnome.TextEditor")

# Coordinates and keys, when you need them.
gui.move_mouse(500, 300)
gui.click()
gui.type_text("Hello")
gui.send_keys("^(a)^(c)")  # Ctrl-A, Ctrl-C

# Motion the toolkit can see, for drag-and-drop and hover.
gui.drag((120, 400), (600, 400))
```

Matching on role and name survives the application being moved or resized,
unlike clicking at `(842, 612)`. `elements()`/`element()` take more than
role and name -- `enabled`/`visible` filter on state, `name`/`description`
take a compiled regex instead of an exact string, and `predicate` is an
escape hatch for anything else (an ancestor/descendant check, say):

```python
from pyguitest import Role

gui.elements(role=Role.PUSH_BUTTON, enabled=True)
gui.element(name=re.compile(r"^Save"))
gui.element(role=Role.CHECK_BOX, within=gui.window_element("Preferences"))
```

Ask before depending on anything that varies by desktop:

```python
from pyguitest import Capability

if gui.supports(Capability.WINDOW_GEOMETRY):
    x, y, w, h = gui.geometry(window)
```

`connect()` never raises on a limited desktop — a session with few capabilities
is the normal case, and `supports()` is how you find out.

A session is usually several backends at once: elements from AT-SPI, injection
from a CLI adapter, capture from another. `CompositeBackend` merges their
capabilities and routes each call to whichever member provides it, so callers
see one object. `backend.providers()` shows the routing.

### Screenshots

```python
gui.screenshot("desktop.png")  # the whole desktop
gui.screenshot("editor.png", window=window)  # one window
gui.screenshot("corner.png", region=(0, 0, 400, 300))
```

`region` is `(x, y, width, height)` in screen coordinates — the same tuple
`gui.geometry(window)` returns, on every backend. You never write a tool's
own rectangle syntax; whichever tool the session picked gets its own built
for it. `window` is served two ways, and the difference shows in the image:
under X11 the window's own pixels are read, so anything stacked on top of it
is absent; everywhere else the rectangle is looked up and cut out of a
full-screen shot, which does include whatever is covering it.
`gui.supports(Capability.WINDOW_CAPTURE)` tells you which you are getting.

**Automatically, when a test fails.** Nothing captures on its own — a
screenshot has to be taken while the failure is still propagating, because
by the time an `except:` block runs the application under test is usually
gone. Wrap the part you want documented:

```python
with gui.capture_on_failure("artifacts"):
    gui.button("Save").click()
    assert gui.element(name="Saved")
```

Nothing is written when the block succeeds. On failure the image lands in
`artifacts/` (or `$PYGUITEST_SCREENSHOT_DIR`, or the temporary directory),
its path is attached to the exception as `.screenshot`, and the original
exception is re-raised untouched, so the test runner still reports the real
failure. A screenshot that itself fails is recorded on the exception as
`.screenshot_error` and swallowed — it never replaces the failure it was
trying to document.

## Examples

Runnable scripts in [examples/](examples/), each degrading with an
explanation when the desktop cannot do what it asks:

```sh
python3 examples/01_what_can_i_do.py     # start here
python3 examples/03_widgets.py           # buttons, text boxes, dropdowns
python3 examples/06_a_real_test.py       # the one to copy: a unittest suite
```

## Tools

```sh
pyguitest                     # what this desktop can actually do
pyguitest doctor              # what to install to unlock more
pyguitest debug               # everything needed to diagnose a bug report
pyguitest inspect             # the accessible tree of every open window
pyguitest migrate script.pl   # what porting a Perl script involves
pyguitest record              # hand off to pyguitest-recorder, if installed
```

All six also work as `python -m pyguitest …` without installing.

`pyguitest debug` is what to paste into a bug report: package and Python
versions, every environment probe (not only the ones that came back true),
each detected tool's own `--version`, and whether the process is running
inside a Flatpak, toolbox, or other container -- which changes what every
other probe on this list actually sees. Add `--json` for a machine-readable
form.

`pyguitest inspect` walks the accessible tree of every open window and
prints it, grouped by application -- the tool for seeing what `gui.button(...)`
or `gui.element(role=..., name=...)` actually has to match against, without
writing a script first. `--window TITLE_REGEX` narrows it to one application;
`--json` gives the same tree as machine-readable data, the same split
`debug` uses.

The migration scanner reports the tier of every X11::GUITest call in a source
file and exits non-zero if any call has no Wayland path, so a port can be gated
in CI.

`pyguitest record` is an alias for [pyguitest-recorder][recorder], which
records desktop activity and writes the pyguitest script for it. That tool is
a separate package -- pyguitest does not depend on it, and installing pyguitest
does not install it -- so the subcommand reports how to install it if it is
absent. Everything after `record` is passed straight through, so
`pyguitest record --help` is the recorder's own help and every one of its
flags works unchanged.

[recorder]: https://github.com/ctrondlp/pyguitest-recorder
[testable-guis]: https://github.com/ctrondlp/pyguitest-recorder/blob/main/docs/testable-guis.md

## Documentation

**Start here**

- [docs/getting-started.md](docs/getting-started.md) — five minutes to a
  working script, which API to reach for, and what X11, Wayland and XWayland
  each change
- [docs/recipes.md](docs/recipes.md) — task-shaped answers: waiting properly,
  forms, windows, screenshots, CI, and an X11::GUITest cheat sheet
- [docs/troubleshooting.md](docs/troubleshooting.md) — symptom first: nothing
  found, nothing typed, nothing captured

**Reference**

- [docs/api.md](docs/api.md) — the full API reference: every public class,
  method and enum, with the capability each one needs
- [docs/install.md](docs/install.md) — what each backend needs, per
  distribution, and how capture picks a path
- [docs/input.md](docs/input.md) — injecting pointer and keyboard input:
  permissions, daemons, keymap safety, libei and the portal
- [docs/validation.md](docs/validation.md) — what has been run against a real
  desktop, and what has not
- [docs/ai-assistants.md](docs/ai-assistants.md) — rules for a coding
  assistant generating pyguitest code
- [testable-guis.md][testable-guis] — how to build a GUI that can be tested
  at all: the accessibility work that lets a test name a button instead of
  clicking a coordinate. Written to be handed to application developers;
  lives in the [recorder][] repository

**Design and internals** — [docs/developers/](docs/developers/): why the API
is not a port, the audit of all 50 X11::GUITest exports it derives from, the
two ADRs, the repository structure, and the protocol gaps worth taking
upstream.

## Contributing

Tests, lint, types, CI and the D-Bus suite: [CONTRIBUTING.md](CONTRIBUTING.md).

## License

GPL-2.0-or-later. See [LICENSE](LICENSE).
