Launch ZAP using a script if not already running

Question

I launch ZAP with a Python script using subprocess:

filePath=r"C:\\Program Files\\OWASP\\Zed Attack Proxy\\zap-2.11.1.jar"
subprocess.Popen(filePath, shell=True, stdout=subprocess.PIPE)

This script works fine and launches ZAP. However, I'd like to have a check whether the app is already running and if so, not to launch it again. I took a look how could this be achieved in Python and realized I could use a check for running processes. Problem is that the process runs as Java(TM) Platform SE binary in Task Manager so checking for that one might not be the best solution.

Answer 1

A simple workaround would be to simply grab all titles of current processes and if it happens to find zap amongst them then break

or just have a flag set if it finds it as follows:

import subprocess
import pyautogui
global marker
marker = False

for window in pyautogui.getAllWindows():  
    if window.title == "OWASP ZAP":
        marker = True
if marker:
    filePath=r"C:\\Program Files\\OWASP\\Zed Attack Proxy\\zap-2.11.1.jar"
    subprocess.Popen(filePath, shell=True, stdout=subprocess.PIPE)