How to make actions to copy and paste selected text in Textarea?

[Tim-Cao]

from textual import on, work
from textual.app import App, ComposeResult, events
from textual.widgets import *
from textual.binding import Binding
import pyperclip


class ScriptApp(App):
    BINDINGS = [
        Binding("ctrl+p", "copy_to_clipboard"),
        Binding("ctrl+v", "paste_from_clipboard"),
    ]

    def compose(self) -> ComposeResult:
        yield TextArea("Test Sceniaro 1:", id="textarea-1")
        yield TextArea("Test Sceniaro 1:", id="textarea-2")
        yield Output()

    @work(exclusive=True, thread=True)
    def action_copy_to_clipboard(self) -> None:
        self.query_one(Output).begin_capture_print()

        text_to_copy = self.query_one(TextArea).selected_text

        pyperclip.copy(text_to_copy)

    @work(exclusive=True, thread=True)
    def action_paste_from_clipboard(self) -> None:
        self.query_one(Output).begin_capture_print()

        self.query_one(TextArea).replace(
            pyperclip.paste(),
            self.query_one(TextArea).selection.start,
            self.query_one(TextArea).selection.end,
        )


class Output(RichLog):
    def __init__(self) -> None:
        super().__init__(highlight=True, markup=True)

    @on(events.Print)
    def on_print(self, event: events.Print) -> None:
        if event.text.strip():
            self.write(event.text)


app = ScriptApp()

if __name__ == "__main__":
    app.run()

Run this app, it has two Textarea widgets. The actions fail since TooManyMatches: Call to only_one resulted in more than one matched node

[davep]

Your question doesn't really have anything to do with TextArea or clipboards; this is just a bug in your code when you come to doing a query. You're composing multiple widgets of the same type (in this case two TextArea) into your application then doing a query_one on just the type alone to get one back. The problem is that query_one can't possibly know which one you want, because you don't tell it.

You'll notice you actually gave your TextArea their own IDs; you should use that to perform the query. For example:

self.query_one("#textarea-1", TextArea)

[Tim-Cao]

Is it possible to query TextArea widget where the cursor is on? @TomJGooding

[Zaloog]

@Tim-Cao I guess you can check if a certain TextArea widget is focused and then use the text from that.
For more infos on attributes/properties of widgets you can check the docs. Or use textual-dev and have the console run in parallel to see what events are sent and are useful to get the Widget of your choice based on certain state/attribute

[Tim-Cao]

The ideal solution is to make ctrl+insert work. #4050
Since the ctrl+shift+c also quit the app.

[TomJGooding]

I think I understand the confusion now. The query_one method just gets a widget, it doesn't know what widget is currently focused.

You could check if the TextArea is focused like @Zaloog suggested.

But actually if this binding shouldn't do anything if a different type of widget is focused, wouldn't it make more sense to add the binding to the TextArea, rather than the App?

class TextAreaWithCopyPaste(TextArea):
    BINDINGS = [
        Binding("ctrl+p", "copy_to_clipboard"),
        Binding("ctrl+v", "paste_from_clipboard"),
    ]

    def action_copy_to_clipboard(self) -> None:
        text_to_copy = self.selected_text
        # etc...

[davep]

I'm just going to second and emphasise what Tom is saying here: if you want bindings that act on the currently-focused widget, and especially if the bindings only make sense for certain widgets (there's no need to paste into a currently-focused Button, for example), then the thing to do is to extend the widget in question and add the bindings and functionality there.

[Tim-Cao]

The solution works.

class TextAreaWithCopyPaste(TextArea):
    BINDINGS = [
        Binding("ctrl+p", "copy_to_clipboard"),
        Binding("ctrl+v", "paste_from_clipboard"),
    ]

    def action_copy_to_clipboard(self) -> None:
        text_to_copy = self.selected_text
        # etc...

Thanks @TomJGooding