pygame.scrap

EXPERIMENTAL!: This API may change or disappear in later pygame releases. If you use this, your code may break with the next pygame release.

The scrap module is for transferring data to/from the clipboard. This allows for cutting and pasting data between pygame and other applications. Some basic data (MIME) types are defined and registered:

pygame         string
constant        value        description
--------------------------------------------------
SCRAP_TEXT   "text/plain"    plain text
SCRAP_BMP    "image/bmp"     BMP encoded image data
SCRAP_PBM    "image/pbm"     PBM encoded image data
SCRAP_PPM    "image/ppm"     PPM encoded image data

pygame.SCRAP_PPM, pygame.SCRAP_PBM and pygame.SCRAP_BMP are suitable for surface buffers to be shared with other applications. pygame.SCRAP_TEXT is an alias for the plain text clipboard type.

Depending on the platform, additional types are automatically registered when data is placed into the clipboard to guarantee a consistent sharing behaviour with other applications. The following listed types can be used as strings to be passed to the respective pygame.scrap module functions.

For Windows platforms, these additional types are supported automatically and resolve to their internal definitions:

"text/plain;charset=utf-8"   UTF-8 encoded text
"audio/wav"                  WAV encoded audio
"image/tiff"                 TIFF encoded image data

For X11 platforms, these additional types are supported automatically and resolve to their internal definitions:

"text/plain;charset=utf-8"   UTF-8 encoded text
"UTF8_STRING"                UTF-8 encoded text
"COMPOUND_TEXT"              COMPOUND text

User defined types can be used, but the data might not be accessible by other applications unless they know what data type to look for. Example: Data placed into the clipboard by pygame.scrap.put("my_data_type", byte_data) can only be accessed by applications which query the clipboard for the "my_data_type" data type.

For an example of how the scrap module works refer to the examples page (pygame.examples.scrap_clipboard.main()) or the code directly in GitHub (pygame/examples/scrap_clipboard.py).

pygame.scrap.init()

Initializes the scrap module.

init() -> None

Initialize the scrap module.

Raises:	pygame.error -- if unable to initialize scrap module

Note

The scrap module requires pygame.display.set_mode() be called before being initialized.

pygame.scrap.get_init()

Returns True if the scrap module is currently initialized.

get_init() -> bool

Gets the scrap module's initialization state.

Returns:	True if the pygame.scrap module is currently initialized, False otherwise
Return type:	bool

New in pygame 1.9.5.

pygame.scrap.get()

Gets the data for the specified type from the clipboard.

get(type) -> bytes or str or None

Retrieves the data for the specified type from the clipboard. In python 3 the data is returned as a byte string and might need further processing (such as decoding to Unicode).

Parameters:	type (string) -- data type to retrieve from the clipboard
Returns:	data (byte string in python 3 or str in python 2) for the given type identifier or None if no data for the given type is available
Return type:	bytes or str or None

text = pygame.scrap.get(pygame.SCRAP_TEXT)
if text:
    print("There is text in the clipboard.")
else:
    print("There does not seem to be text in the clipboard.")

pygame.scrap.get_types()

Gets a list of the available clipboard types.

get_types() -> list

Gets a list of data type string identifiers for the data currently available on the clipboard. Each identifier can be used in the pygame.scrap.get() method to get the clipboard content of the specific type.

Returns:	list of strings of the available clipboard data types, if there is no data in the clipboard an empty list is returned
Return type:	list

for t in pygame.scrap.get_types():
    if "text" in t:
        # There is some content with the word "text" in its type string.
        print(pygame.scrap.get(t))

pygame.scrap.put()

Places data into the clipboard.

put(type, data) -> None

Places data for a given clipboard type into the clipboard. The data must be a string buffer. The type is a string identifying the type of data to be placed into the clipboard. This can be one of the predefined pygame.SCRAP_PBM, pygame.SCRAP_PPM, pygame.SCRAP_BMP or pygame.SCRAP_TEXT values or a user defined string identifier.

Parameters:	type (string) -- type identifier of the data to be placed into the clipboard data (bytes or str) -- data to be place into the clipboard (in python 3 data is a byte string and in python 2 data is a str)
Raises:	pygame.error -- if unable to put the data into the clipboard

with open("example.bmp", "rb") as fp:
    pygame.scrap.put(pygame.SCRAP_BMP, fp.read())
# The image data is now on the clipboard for other applications to access
# it.
pygame.scrap.put(pygame.SCRAP_TEXT, b"A text to copy")
pygame.scrap.put("Plain text", b"Data for user defined type 'Plain text'")

pygame.scrap.contains()

Checks whether data for a given type is available in the clipboard.

contains(type) -> bool

Checks whether data for the given type is currently available in the clipboard.

Parameters:	type (string) -- data type to check availability of
Returns:	True if data for the passed type is available in the clipboard, False otherwise
Return type:	bool

if pygame.scrap.contains(pygame.SCRAP_TEXT):
    print("There is text in the clipboard.")
if pygame.scrap.contains("own_data_type"):
    print("There is stuff in the clipboard.")

pygame.scrap.lost()

Indicates if the clipboard ownership has been lost by the pygame application.

lost() -> bool

Indicates if the clipboard ownership has been lost by the pygame application.

Returns:	True, if the clipboard ownership has been lost by the pygame application, False if the pygame application still owns the clipboard
Return type:	bool

if pygame.scrap.lost():
    print("The clipboard is in use by another application.")

pygame.scrap.set_mode()

Sets the clipboard access mode.

set_mode(mode) -> None

Sets the access mode for the clipboard. This is only of interest for X11 environments where clipboard modes pygame.SCRAP_SELECTION (for mouse selections) and pygame.SCRAP_CLIPBOARD (for the clipboard) are available. Setting the mode to pygame.SCRAP_SELECTION in other environments will not change the mode from pygame.SCRAP_CLIPBOARD.

Parameters:	mode -- access mode, supported values are pygame.SCRAP_CLIPBOARD and pygame.SCRAP_SELECTION (pygame.SCRAP_SELECTION only has an effect when used on X11 platforms)
Raises:	ValueError -- if the mode parameter is not pygame.SCRAP_CLIPBOARD or pygame.SCRAP_SELECTION