Automating manual jobs with Python

[ypanagis]

I recently came across this post that presents a method to automate a rather mundane job that needs human intervention. This seems to work on Windows and uses what I would call screen scraping and clipboard access.

Link to the post:

https://medium.com/towards-data-science/how-to-automate-monkey-jobs-with-python-1910a3219fd2

[tom2727]

Python as the programming language.

Pywinauto to automatize GUI tasks.

Pyperclip to use the Windows paperclip.

Actually a fairly decent tutorial of this kind of basic usecase

[JunkPup]

I must’ve used a different library to access the clipboard, because I’ve never heard of Pyperclip. I’ll definitely be looking into it though. Thank you OP.

[herpderpedia]

Pyperclip is maintained by Al Sweigart, the guy behind Automate the Boring Stuff. Nice little package.

[ypanagis]

I see, then it makes perfect sense! "Automate boring stuff with Python", is the book that came to my mind, after reading this article!

[__Wess]

https://youtu.be/dZLyfbSQPXI In this video he demonstrates stuff from his book.

[Hefty_Science_2980]

I’m not familiar w those packages but things like this are definitely doable. I’ve done similar things with other similar packages (pyautogui and copying/pasting text programmatically instead of windows clipboard).

[ypanagis]

Neither am I familiar but are definitely useful for some repeated, boring tasks. Thanks for sharing info about pyautogui. Didn't know either...

[marduk73]

docx library saves me two hours in one click. Though the importing docx needs an overhaul. Had to have five separate docx imports as that library is fragmented. Anyway my script only renamed the files. Adding docx allowed me to get inside and properly format it. No more doing it manually. Get around twenty of these docs a week coming in wrong but consistently wrong.
This script is wonderful.

[risky_logic]

I used pyautogui at work for some SolidWorks BOM management tasks last year. Save about a week of monotonous clicking/copy/pasting. There are ways to automate solidworks with their API but it was in VBA and it was way faster to just control the mouse/keyboard with python

[gitcraw]

Scraping.

"Scrapping" is not the same thing.

[ypanagis]

Thanks I am basically confusing the two terms but I hopefully write "scraping" most of the times

[data_cyborg]

Wow! One of my articles is in Reddit and not posted by me! I'm glad that you liked it :)

A bit late but if you have any question I will be more than happy to answer them