PyUAC - Python User Access Control for Windows

This package provides a way to invoke User Access Control (UAC) in Windows from Python.

This allows a Python process to re-spawn a new process with Administrator level rights using the UAC prompt. Note that the original process is not elevated; a new process is created.

The main purpose of pyuac is to allow command line Python scripts to ensure they are run as Administrator on Windows. There is no ability to execute only parts of a program as Administrator - the entire script is re-launched with the same command line. You can also override the command line used for the admin process.

See also pyuac on the Python Package Index (PyPI)

Usage and examples

There are two basic ways to use this library. Perhaps the simplest way is to decorate your Python command line script's main function. The other is to directly use the isUserAdmin and runAsAdmin functions yourself. The decorator allows you to automatically capture the output of the Admin process and return that output string to the non-admin parent process.

See also tests/example_usage.py

Decorator

The decorator is an easy way to ensure your script's main() function will respawn itself as Admin if necessary. Note that the decorator has no effect unless on the Windows platform. It does NOT currently relaunch the script with 'sudo' on Linux or other POSIX platforms. On non-Windows platforms, it's a no-op.

Decorator usage example

from pyuac import main_requires_admin

@main_requires_admin
def main():
    print("Do stuff here that requires being run as an admin.")
    # The window will disappear as soon as the program exits!
    input("Press enter to close the window. >")

if __name__ == "__main__":
    main()

Capture stdout from admin process

You can also capture the stdout and stderr of your Admin sub-process if you need to check it for errors from the non-admin parent. By default, unless you set scan_for_error=False on the decorator, it will check the last line of both stdout and stderr for the words 'error' or 'exception', and if it finds those, will raise RuntimeError on the parent non-admin side.

from pyuac import main_requires_admin

@main_requires_admin(return_output=True)
def main():
    print("Do stuff here that requires being run as an admin.")
    # The window will disappear as soon as the program exits!
    input("Press enter to close the window. >")

if __name__ == "__main__":
    rv = main()
    if not rv:
        print("I must have already been Admin!")
    else:
        admin_stdout_str, admin_stderr_str, *_ = rv
        if "Do stuff" in admin_stdout_str:
            print("It worked.")

Direct usage

There are two main direct usage functions provided:

isUserAdmin()

This returns a boolean to indicate whether the current user has elevated Administrator status.

runAsAdmin()

Re-launch the current process (or the given command line) as an Administrator. This will trigger the UAC (User Access Control) prompt if necessary.

Direct usage example

This shows a typical usage pattern:

import pyuac

def main():
    print("Do stuff here that requires being run as an admin.")
    # The window will disappear as soon as the program exits!
    input("Press enter to close the window. >")

if __name__ == "__main__":
    if not pyuac.isUserAdmin():
        print("Re-launching as admin!")
        pyuac.runAsAdmin()
    else:        
        main()  # Already an admin here.

Requirements

• This package only supports Windows at the moment. The isUserAdmin function will work under Linux / Posix, but the runAsAdmin functionality is currently Windows only. Using the @main_requires_admin decorator will be a no-op on non-Windows platforms.

• This requires Python 2.7, or Python 3.3 or higher.

• This requires the PyWin32 package to be installed.

https://pypi.org/project/pywin32/ https://github.com/mhammond/pywin32

• It also depends on the packages decorator and tee

PyWin32 problems

The PyWin32 package is required by this library (pyuac).

If you get ImportError or ModuleNotFoundError when you run this, usually that means PyWin32 is either not installed at all, or else the installation is incomplete; see below.

PyWin32 can be installed via pip, but sometimes there are problems completing the installation scripts which install the COM object support required by pyuac.

Typically, this can be fixed doing the following:

• Launching a command prompt as Administrator
• Activate your Python virtual environment, if needed.
• pip install pywin32
• python venv\Scripts\pywin32_postinstall.py -install

Replace venv above with the path to your Python installation.

• Then, in a regular non-admin command prompt, activate your Python and try this:
• python -c "from win32com.shell import shellcon"

If that throws an error, the PyWin32 installation was not successful. Try removing it from pip and reinstalling it under the Admin command prompt, and then run the postinstall script again.

If all else fails, and you are using a system-installed Python (not a virtualenv) then you can try downloading the PyWin32 .exe installer.

Changelog

See CHANGELOG.md

Credits

This program was originally written by Preston Landers and is provided courtesy of Journyx, Inc.

License

See the LICENSE file