Title: Change Windows Console Character Attribute (Color)
Submitter: Randy Not specified (other recipes)
Last Updated: 2006/07/20
Version no: 1.2
Category: System

Description:

A simple function to change the background/foreground color of characters written to a Windows console (command line). Requires ctypes, which is included with Python version 2.5 or later.

Source: Text Source

# See http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/winprog/winprog/windows_api_reference.asp
# for information on Windows APIs.
STD_INPUT_HANDLE = -10
STD_OUTPUT_HANDLE= -11
STD_ERROR_HANDLE = -12

FOREGROUND_BLUE = 0x01 # text color contains blue.
FOREGROUND_GREEN= 0x02 # text color contains green.
FOREGROUND_RED  = 0x04 # text color contains red.
FOREGROUND_INTENSITY = 0x08 # text color is intensified.
BACKGROUND_BLUE = 0x10 # background color contains blue.
BACKGROUND_GREEN= 0x20 # background color contains green.
BACKGROUND_RED  = 0x40 # background color contains red.
BACKGROUND_INTENSITY = 0x80 # background color is intensified.

import ctypes

std_out_handle = ctypes.windll.kernel32.GetStdHandle(STD_OUTPUT_HANDLE)

def set_color(color, handle=std_out_handle):
    """(color) -> BOOL
    
    Example: set_color(FOREGROUND_GREEN | FOREGROUND_INTENSITY)
    """
    bool = ctypes.windll.kernel32.SetConsoleTextAttribute(handle, color)
    return bool
# set_color

# win_console.py

Discussion:

See link for information on the two Windows APIs called by this code.