[Tutor] monitor other running applications with Python?

[Alan Gauld]

"Che M" <pine508 at hotmail.com> 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