Crash when switching between windows

[AlexanderPolenov]

OS: Windows 10. When I change active window, program crashes with error:

TypeError: MouseSwitch() missing 8 required positional arguments: 'msg', 'x', 'y', 'data', 'flags', 'time', 'hwnd', and 'window_name'

class DoubleClicker(PyMouseEvent):
    def __init__(self):
        PyMouseEvent.__init__(self)

    def click(self, x, y, button, press):
        if button == 1:
            if press:
                print(x,y)

I also get almost the same error when use PyKeyboardEvent.

[pepijndevos]

Is there a stacktrace? Likely a bug in PyHook, which we use for events on Windows.

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/27363268/how-can-i-avoid-typeerror-mouseswitch-missing-8-required-positional-arguments https://sourceforge.net/p/pyhook/bugs/1/

Unfortunately the project doesn't seem to be maintained. This leaves us in a tricky situation.

[AlexanderPolenov]

No, there is no stacktrace. Only this error message.

[moses-palmer]

A possible workaround for the bug in PyHook is to use a simpler mechanism when hooking on Windows. That is what I use in pynput (see here: https://github.com/moses-palmer/pynput/blob/master/lib/pynput/_util/win32.py#L244).

The strange requirement for a DLL-function is not imposed for the hooks used by PyUserInput, so a simple ctypes based approach works, and the native code from PyHook is not strictly necessary.

Relying on ctypes brings the additional benefit of making the final projects easier to distribute.

[pepijndevos]

I'd be in favour of replacing PyHook with ctypes or cffi if anyone has the knowledge and time to pull it off. I certainly don't with exams coming up.

[ErikBjare]

I've done some research on this topic which you can find here: https://github.com/ActivityWatch/aw-watcher-afk/issues/12

I need this functionality for the project which the linked issue belongs to, might investigate ctypes or cffi but since the scope of the functionality I need is much smaller than the scope of PyUserInput I might end up not doing the full thing. I'll update the linked issue with details as it's resolved.