wexpect

Wexpect is a Windows variant of pexpect.

Pexpect is a Python module for spawning child applications and controlling them automatically.

You need wexpect if...

• you want to control any windows console application from python script.
• you want to write test-automation script for a windows console application.
• you want to automate your job by controlling multiple application parallel, synchoronusly.

Install

pip install wexpect

OR

Because wexpect a tiny project dropping the wexpect.py file into your working directory is usually good enough instead of installing. However in this case you need to install manually the pypiwin32 dependence.

Usage

To interract with a child process use spawn method:

import wexpect 
child = wexpect.spawn('cmd.exe')
child.expect('>')
child.sendline('ls')
child.expect('>')
print(child.before)
child.sendline('exit')

For more information see examples folder.

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What is it?

Wexpect is a Python module for spawning child applications and controlling them automatically. Wexpect can be used for automating interactive applications such as ssh, ftp, passwd, telnet, etc. It can be used to a automate setup scripts for duplicating software package installations on different servers. It can be used for automated software testing. Wexpect is in the spirit of Don Libes' Expect, but Wexpect is pure Python. Other Expect-like modules for Python require TCL and Expect or require C extensions to be compiled. Wexpect does not use C, Expect, or TCL extensions.

Original Pexpect should work on any platform that supports the standard Python pty module. While Wexpect works on Windows platforms. The Wexpect interface focuses on ease of use so that simple tasks are easy.

History

Wexpect is a one-file code developed at University of Washington. There are several copy and reference to this code with very few (almost none) documentation nor integration.

This repo tries to fix these limitations, with a few example code and pypi integration.

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Dev

Thanks for any contributing!

Test

To run test, enter into the folder of the wexpect's repo then:

python -m unittest

Deploy

The deployment itself is automated and done by appveyor. See after_test section in appveyor.yml for more details.

The wexpect uses pbr for managing releasing procedures. The versioning is handled by the pbr. The "master-version" is the git tag. Pbr derives the package version from the git tags.

Basic behaviour

Let's go through the example code:

import wexpect 
child = wexpect.spawn('cmd.exe')
child.expect('>')
child.sendline('ls')
child.expect('>')
print(child.before)
child.sendline('exit')

spawn()

child = wexpect.spawn('cmd.exe')

Call trace:

• ::spawn (line 289)
• spawn_windows::init() (line 1639)
• spawn_unix::init() (line 313)
• spawn_windows::_spawn() (line 1660)
• Wtty::spawn() (line 1932)
• Wtty::startChild() (line 1978)
• win32process.CreateProcess() (line 2024)

expect()

child.expect('>')

Call trace:

• spawn_linux::expect() (line 1285)
• spawn_linux::expect_list() (line 1365)
• spawn_linux::expect_loop() (line 1397)
• spawn_windows::read_nonblocking() (line 1635)
• Wtty::read_nonblocking()
• Wtty::readConsoleToCursor()
• Wtty::readConsole() (line: 2153)
• __consout.ReadConsoleOutputCharacter() (line: 2176)

sendline()

child.sendline('ls')

• spawn_linux::sendline() (line 1008)
• spawn_windows::send() (line 1795)
• Wtty::write() (line 2111)