On Sat, Jul 20, 2013 at 9:52 AM, David M. Cotter <m...@davecotter.com> wrote: > i'd like my app to be "available" to python while it's running. > > for example, say my app is "FooBar.app". > > when my FooBar.app is running, now there is a python interface available to > python, and the user can write python scripts to make use of it. > > with their scripts, they can control my running application > > when FooBar.app is NOT running, perhaps making use of any of the python > functions of "FooBar.app" would either return an error, or possibly launch > "FooBar.app"? or do nothing since it's not running?
Interfacing C and Python like you suggest can't be done with embedding, because that requires that your app be already running, and probably not by having your code run as a pure module. In fact, I would actually suggest that you devise a separate protocol between your app and the Python script, and run them as separate processes. That way, they run independently, and you may (platform-specific code required here though) be able to invoke your app; most importantly, you'll be able to cleanly handle multiple Python scripts trying to control you simultaneously. What platforms are you aiming at? If it's just for Unix-like ones, the easiest way is probably to create a Unix domain socket, which the Python program can write to and/or read from. With a protocol based around simple operations like that, your Python module need not even involve C code - it simply opens a socket file and uses standard I/O methods on it. Alternatively, you may want to consider a TCP socket, which would let you split the client and server across a network, or possibly direct shared memory access. The world's your oyster. What kind of sauce would you like it with? ChrisA -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
