"Che M" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote > Hi, searched a bit for this but haven't found much. > Is it possible to use Python to monitor the use of > other applications?
Yes, definitely. > At minimum, I wan't to know that the application was running Thats fairly easy using OS tools such as ps on Unix. You can dig a little deeper and use the system APIs such as the proc fiilesystem or the equivalent in the windows registry. > better would be some sense of the use or content, such > as whether the app was idle or the user was using it, > or, for a web browser, what URLs were visited and for > how long, etc. Thats possible but gets very OS specific and very low level too. On Windows you can catch Windows events and messages using some of the raw Win32 API calls from the ctypes module. (I've never used ctypes for anything this low level but it should be possible, I''ve certainly done it in C++ and Delphi on Win 9X). But its messy and fairly deep Windows magic and you will need to spend a fair bit of time experimenting and reading the docs on MSDN as well as the Win32 API help file. > Ideally I'd like a cross-platforms approach I doubt if that's possible except at the process monitoring level. For the kind of detail you want the bgestb you can do is have a common UI and pluggable modules based on the OS. Also beware legal implications. There are issues around personal privacy, data proptection etc and these vary between countries (and even states in the US). People are increasingly wary of Big Brother style monitoring. Detecting inappropriate use of the internet across a corporate firwall is generally considered OK but silently monitoring individuals brings you into murky legal waters. Finally, take a look at the stuff in the os package and the syslog module for Unix. HTH, -- Alan Gauld Author of the Learn to Program web site http://www.freenetpages.co.uk/hp/alan.gauld _______________________________________________ Tutor maillist - Tutor@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/tutor