Accessing alternate clipboard formats from python

Question

Copying to the clipboard from an application that supports rich text will typically add the text in several formats. I need to find out the available formats, and then retrieve

Answer 1

It's quite straightforward on OS X with the help of the module richxerox, available on pypi. It requires system support including the Apple AppKit and Foundation modules. I had trouble building Objective C for Python 3, so that initially I had only gotten this to work for Python 2. Anaconda 3 comes with all the necessary pieces preinstalled, however.

Here's a demo that prints the available clipboard types, and then fetches and prints each one:

import richxerox as rx

# Dump formats
verbose = True
if verbose:
        print(rx.available(neat=False, dyn=True))
    else:
        print(rx.available())

# Dump contents in all formats
for k, v in rx.pasteall(neat=False, dyn=True).items():
    line = "\n*** "+k+":  "+v
    print(line)

Output:

(
    "public.html",
    "public.utf8-plain-text"
)

*** public.html:  
  pyperclip: Looks interesting

*** public.utf8-plain-text:  pyperclip: Looks interesting

To print in a desired format with fall-back to text, you could use this:

paste_format = "rtf"
content = rx.paste(paste_format)
if not content:
    content = rx.paste("text")

Or you could first check if a format is available:

if "public.rtf" in rx.available():
    content = rx.paste("rtf")
else:
    content = rx.paste("text")