sending keyboard interrupt programmatically

Question

An application that asks for a keyboard interrupt. How can I send for a keyboard interrupt programmatically? I need it for automation. Like <C-c> or <C-x>

KeyboardInterrupt 

Answer 1

Code running in a separate thread can cause a KeyboardInterrupt to be generated in the main thread by calling thread.interrupt_main(). See https://docs.python.org/2/library/thread.html#thread.interrupt_main

Answer 2

Since you mention automation I assume you want a SendKeys for Python. Try this: http://rutherfurd.net/python/sendkeys/

Answer 3

My suggestion to solve this problem is to use the following code pattern. I used it to programmatically start a tensorboard server and shut it down by sending a CTRL-C when the object it belongs to is deleted. Generally speaking, this should work for any example that provokes a subprocess that is supposed to be send a KeyBoardInterrupt:

1. Import signal and subprocess

   import signal
   import subprocess 
   

2. Create the subprocess using subprocess.Popen. Important: set the creationflags parameter to subprocess.CREATE_NEW_PROCESS_GROUP. This is necessary to later be able to send the KeyboardInterrupt event.

   command= <enter your command that is supposed to be run in different process as a string> 
   process = subprocess.Popen(command.split(),stdout=subprocess.PIPE,stdin=subprocess.PIPE,creationflags=subprocess.CREATE_NEW_PROCESS_GROUP) 
   

3. Wherever you want to send the keyboardInterrupt, do the following:

   process.send_signal(signal.CTRL_C_EVENT)
   

That is it! Please see the the official subprocess documentation for insights on why the creationflags parameter of popen has to be set that way.

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This is how the code looks for my example in a less generic way:

import signal
import subprocess
import time

class ExperimentTracker():
   
     def __init__(self):
         self.tensorboard_process=None

     def __del__(self):
         #shutdown tensorboard server and terminate process
         self.tensorboard_process.send_signal(signal.CTRL_C_EVENT)
         time.sleep(0.2)
         self.tensorboard_process.kill()

     def launch_tensorboard(self):
         #launch tensorboard
         bashCommand= "tensorboard --logdir runs" 
         self.tensorboard_process = subprocess.Popen(bashCommand.split(),stdout=subprocess.PIPE,stdin=subprocess.PIPE,creationflags=subprocess.CREATE_NEW_PROCESS_GROUP) 
         time.sleep(2) #sleep for 2 seconds to give tensorboard time to be launched