Accessing alternate clipboard formats from python
It's quite straightforward on OS X with the help of the module richxerox, available on pypi. It requires system support including the Apple AppKit and Foundation modules. I had trouble building Objective C for Python 3, so that initially I had only gotten this to work for Python 2. Anaconda 3 comes with all the necessary pieces preinstalled, however.
Here's a demo that prints the available clipboard types, and then fetches and prints each one:
import richxerox as rx# Dump formatsverbose = Trueif verbose: print(rx.available(neat=False, dyn=True)) else: print(rx.available())# Dump contents in all formatsfor k, v in rx.pasteall(neat=False, dyn=True).items(): line = "\n*** "+k+": "+v print(line)Output:
( "public.html", "public.utf8-plain-text")*** public.html: <html><head><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"> </head><body><a href="http://coffeeghost.net/2010/10/09/pyperclip-a-cross-platform-clipboard-module-for-python/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">pyperclip</a>: Looks interesting</body></html>*** public.utf8-plain-text: pyperclip: Looks interestingTo print in a desired format with fall-back to text, you could use this:
paste_format = "rtf"content = rx.paste(paste_format)if not content: content = rx.paste("text")Or you could first check if a format is available:
if "public.rtf" in rx.available(): content = rx.paste("rtf")else: content = rx.paste("text")