Question

I have a python script which requires the opening of another terminal window to send some commands. Stackoverflowers have already gotten me that far:

import subprocess
server_terminal = subprocess.Popen(['open','-a','/Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app','/Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app']) #Not sure about the inelegance of the doubled path, but it does open another terminal window, which I need.

The next step that I need is to send this terminal some commands so that I can get a local server set up on the user’s desktop. Having some significant troubles figuring how to control this subprocess.

Can anyone direct me to the method I would use to make this terminal subprocess take stdin from me? I would prefer to avoid 3rd party modules.

Edit: Some context — My major goal is to open a selenium server in a separate terminal window so that I can issue it commands. I already know how to control the server once it’s started, I just can’t figure out how to automatically start one.

Thanks for all your help!

Answer 1

You can use Popen to start the server directly:

selenium_jar = '/full/path/to/selenium-server-standalone-2.0b3.jar'
path_to_fifo_profile = '...'

# start external process
p = subprocess.Popen(['java', '-jar', selenium_jar, 
                              '-firefoxProfileTemplate', path_to_fifo_profile,
                     ])
# wait for it to finish before exiting
p.wait()

If you want to see the output, you can use os.system instead:

os.system('java '
          '-jar /path/to/selenium-server-standalone-2.0b3.jar '
          '-firefoxProfileTemplate /path/to/profile')