How do I copy a string to the clipboard on Windows using Python?

Question

I\'m trying to make a basic Windows application that builds a string out of user input and then adds it to the clipboard. How do I copy a string to the clipboard using Pytho

Answer 1

You can use the excellent pandas, which has a built in clipboard support, but you need to pass through a DataFrame.

import pandas as pd
df=pd.DataFrame(['Text to copy'])
df.to_clipboard(index=False,header=False)

Answer 2

Use python's clipboard library!

import clipboard as cp
cp.copy("abc")

Clipboard contains 'abc' now. Happy pasting!

Answer 3

Looks like you need to add win32clipboard to your site-packages. It's part of the pywin32 package

Answer 4

The snippet I share here take advantage of the ability to format text files: what if you want to copy a complex output to the clipboard ? (Say a numpy array in column or a list of something)

import subprocess
import os

def cp2clip(clist):

    #create a temporary file
    fi=open("thisTextfileShouldNotExist.txt","w")

    #write in the text file the way you want your data to be
    for m in clist:
        fi.write(m+"\n")

    #close the file
    fi.close()

    #send "clip < file" to the shell
    cmd="clip < thisTextfileShouldNotExist.txt"
    w = subprocess.check_call(cmd,shell=True)

    #delete the temporary text file
    os.remove("thisTextfileShouldNotExist.txt")

    return w

works only for windows, can be adapted for linux or mac I guess. Maybe a bit complicated...

example:

>>>cp2clip(["ET","phone","home"])
>>>0

Ctrl+V in any text editor :

ET
phone
home

Answer 5

I didn't have a solution, just a workaround.

Windows Vista onwards has an inbuilt command called clip that takes the output of a command from command line and puts it into the clipboard. For example, ipconfig | clip.

So I made a function with the os module which takes a string and adds it to the clipboard using the inbuilt Windows solution.

import os
def addToClipBoard(text):
    command = 'echo ' + text.strip() + '| clip'
    os.system(command)

# Example
addToClipBoard('penny lane')

# Penny Lane is now in your ears, eyes, and clipboard.

As previously noted in the comments however, one downside to this approach is that the echo command automatically adds a newline to the end of your text. To avoid this you can use a modified version of the command:

def addToClipBoard(text):
    command = 'echo | set /p nul=' + text.strip() + '| clip'
    os.system(command)

If you are using Windows XP it will work just following the steps in Copy and paste from Windows XP Pro's command prompt straight to the Clipboard.

Answer 6

Code snippet to copy the clipboard:

Create a wrapper Python code in a module named (clipboard.py):

import clr
clr.AddReference('System.Windows.Forms')
from System.Windows.Forms import Clipboard
def setText(text):
    Clipboard.SetText(text)

def getText():
    return Clipboard.GetText()

Then import the above module into your code.

import io
import clipboard
code = clipboard.getText()
print code
code = "abcd"
clipboard.setText(code)

I must give credit to the blog post Clipboard Access in IronPython.