GetCursorPos ctypes vs. pywin32(win32api/win32gui) which to use?

Question

I found those three ways to get the Mouse Coordinates in Windows:

from ctypes import windll, Structure, c_long, byref    
class POINT(Structure):
    _fields_ = [("x", c_long), ("y", c_long)]    
def MousePosition_ctypes():
    pos = POINT()
    windll.user32.GetCursorPos(byref(pos))
    return {"x":pos.x,"y":pos.y}

import win32api     
def MousePosition_win32api():
    pos = win32api.GetCursorPos()
    return {"x":pos[0],"y":pos[1]}

import win32gui
def MousePosition_win32gui():
    flags, hcursor, (x,y) = win32gui.GetCursorInfo()
    return {"x":x,"y":y}

What is the difference between them? Is there an advantage in using ctypes? Is pywin32 doing the same as ctypes here?

I made a timing test with 10^6 runs.

import timeit
print("MousePosition_ctypes  ",timeit.repeat("MousePosition_ctypes()", "from __main__ import MousePosition_windll",number=10**6))
print("MousePosition_win32api",timeit.repeat("MousePosition_win32api()", "from __main__ import MousePosition_win32api",number=10**6))
print("MousePosition_win32gui",timeit.repeat("MousePosition_win32gui()", "from __main__ import MousePosition_win32gui",number=10**6))

Results:

MousePosition_ctypes   [3.171214059203684, 3.0459668639906723, 3.0454502913267243]
MousePosition_win32api [1.9730332863218454, 1.9517156492346004, 2.072004962338813]
MousePosition_win32gui [1.787176519159173, 1.8011713842243182, 1.8127041221688245]

So the win32gui Version would be the fastest..

I also tested the usecase where it is good to get many cursor coordinates per second. So I measured the mean points per seconds over a minute for each method:

def store_mouse_track_ctypes(t):
    t0 = time.time()
    list = []
    dt = 0
    while dt < t:
        t1 = time.time()
        position = MousePosition_ctypes()
        t2 = time.time()
        dt = t2 - t0
        list.append([t1,t2,position["x"],position["y"]])
    return list
a = 60
l = store_mouse_track_ctypes(a)
print("store_mouse_track_ctypes",len(l)/a,"points per second.")

Results:

store_mouse_track_ctypes   169850.01666666666 points per second.
store_mouse_track_win32api 225232.46666666667 points per second.
store_mouse_track_win32gui 231186.85 points per second.

Again win32gui Version is a bit ahead.

Why is the win32gui version the "best"?

GetCursorPos ctypes vs. pywin32(win32api/win32gui) which to use?

0 Answers0