Re: accessing an OLE Automation (IDispatch) server from python which requires the use of out params
Hi, Am 10.12.2012 20:13, schrieb bitbucket: I have an existing Windows application which provides an OLE Automation (IDispatch) interface. I'm not able to change that interface. I'd like to call it from a scripting language. I figure this would provide a nice quick way to invoke on the app. I initially tried this with Windows Powershell but ran into the following problem. I was able to create the object and invoke simple methods on it. However the interface for this app has methods which take out params. i.e. you pass in a reference to a variable and the server fills in the value. I couldn't get that to work. I finally gave up and decided it was just a limitation of Powershell, not being able to work with those out params. [snipp] Before switching technologies I'd check if this solves your problem http://geekswithblogs.net/Lance/archive/2009/01/14/pass-by-reference-parameters-in-powershell.aspx TL;DR IMHO out parameters are basically pointers (pass by reference) and need to be passed like GetSettingValue(name, [ref]$value)... cheers Paul -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: accessing an OLE Automation (IDispatch) server from python which requires the use of out params
On Tuesday, December 11, 2012 3:42:35 AM UTC-5, Paul Kölle wrote: Before switching technologies I'd check if this solves your problem http://geekswithblogs.net/Lance/archive/2009/01/14/pass-by-reference-parameters-in-powershell.aspx TL;DR IMHO out parameters are basically pointers (pass by reference) and need to be passed like GetSettingValue(name, [ref]$value)... Thanks for the suggestion. I believe the [ref] syntax was one of the things I tried, but it didn't work in the context of OLE Automation (IDispatch) calls. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: accessing an OLE Automation (IDispatch) server from python which requires the use of out params
On Monday, December 10, 2012 8:16:43 PM UTC-5, Mark Hammond wrote: out params are best supported if the object supplied a typelib - then Python knows the params are out and does the right thing automagically. If out params are detected, the result of the function will be a tuple of (real_result, out_param1, ...) Even if no typelib is supported, you can access them with a little pain via the win32com.client.Dispatch() object. You might like to follow up to the python-wi...@python.org mailing list where many people will be able to help. HTH, Mark Mark, thanks for the reply. In this case, I have a type library and attempted to use MakePy but it doesn't seem to be working as expected. I was reading through CH12 of your Python Programming on Win32 book (http://oreilly.com/catalog/pythonwin32/chapter/ch12.html). I was hopeful given your description of MakePy that I could get this to work. It appears that you're saying MakePy will convert byref args in a function over to return values. For example, the IDL in the server includes the following 3 functions. [id(1)] void ShowMessage(BSTR msg); [id(2)] void GetSettingValue(BSTR settingName, BSTR* settingValue); [id(3)] void SetSettingValue(BSTR settingName, BSTR settingValue); The thorny one is the GetSettingValue since it takes the out param. When I run MakePy, it generates the below. def ShowMessage(self, msg=defaultNamedNotOptArg): return self._oleobj_.InvokeTypes(1, LCID, 1, (24, 0), ((8, 0),),msg ) def GetSettingValue(self, settingName=defaultNamedNotOptArg, settingValue=defaultNamedNotOptArg): return self._oleobj_.InvokeTypes(2, LCID, 1, (24, 0), ((8, 0), (16392, 0)),settingName , settingValue) def SetSettingValue(self, settingName=defaultNamedNotOptArg, settingValue=defaultNamedNotOptArg): return self._oleobj_.InvokeTypes(3, LCID, 1, (24, 0), ((8, 0), (8, 0)),settingName , settingValue) I noticed that the argument type is different for the out param (16392 instead of 8). However, it doesn't appear to me that its generating return values instead of args (though I'm not very experienced in python). I tried invoking these in python. The ShowMessage and SetSettingValue work great. I can't get the GetSettingValue to work though. Perhaps there's a different syntax I need when using the MakePy generated code? -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: accessing an OLE Automation (IDispatch) server from python which requires the use of out params
On Tuesday, December 11, 2012 10:48:53 AM UTC-5, bitbucket wrote: I noticed that the argument type is different for the out param (16392 instead of 8). However, it doesn't appear to me that its generating return values instead of args (though I'm not very experienced in python). I see that the value 16392 is really VT_BYREF | VT_BSTR and 8 is just VT_BSTR. So in that case it appears MakePy is taking noticed at least of the VT_BYREF and including that in the generated code (since it uses 16392). So maybe there's a special way I need to call the generated wrapper? -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: accessing an OLE Automation (IDispatch) server from python which requires the use of out params
On 12/12/2012 2:48 AM, bitbucket wrote: On Monday, December 10, 2012 8:16:43 PM UTC-5, Mark Hammond wrote: out params are best supported if the object supplied a typelib - then Python knows the params are out and does the right thing automagically. If out params are detected, the result of the function will be a tuple of (real_result, out_param1, ...) Even if no typelib is supported, you can access them with a little pain via the win32com.client.Dispatch() object. You might like to follow up to the python-wi...@python.org mailing list where many people will be able to help. HTH, Mark Mark, thanks for the reply. In this case, I have a type library and attempted to use MakePy but it doesn't seem to be working as expected. I was reading through CH12 of your Python Programming on Win32 book (http://oreilly.com/catalog/pythonwin32/chapter/ch12.html). I was hopeful given your description of MakePy that I could get this to work. It appears that you're saying MakePy will convert byref args in a function over to return values. For example, the IDL in the server includes the following 3 functions. [id(1)] void ShowMessage(BSTR msg); [id(2)] void GetSettingValue(BSTR settingName, BSTR* settingValue); [id(3)] void SetSettingValue(BSTR settingName, BSTR settingValue); The thorny one is the GetSettingValue since it takes the out param. When I run MakePy, it generates the below. def ShowMessage(self, msg=defaultNamedNotOptArg): return self._oleobj_.InvokeTypes(1, LCID, 1, (24, 0), ((8, 0),),msg ) def GetSettingValue(self, settingName=defaultNamedNotOptArg, settingValue=defaultNamedNotOptArg): return self._oleobj_.InvokeTypes(2, LCID, 1, (24, 0), ((8, 0), (16392, 0)),settingName , settingValue) def SetSettingValue(self, settingName=defaultNamedNotOptArg, settingValue=defaultNamedNotOptArg): return self._oleobj_.InvokeTypes(3, LCID, 1, (24, 0), ((8, 0), (8, 0)),settingName , settingValue) I noticed that the argument type is different for the out param (16392 instead of 8). However, it doesn't appear to me that its generating return values instead of args (though I'm not very experienced in python). I tried invoking these in python. The ShowMessage and SetSettingValue work great. I can't get the GetSettingValue to work though. Perhaps there's a different syntax I need when using the MakePy generated code? Seeing the real return value is void, it should just be a matter of: settingValue = ob.GetSettingValue(settingName) Mark -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
accessing an OLE Automation (IDispatch) server from python which requires the use of out params
I have an existing Windows application which provides an OLE Automation (IDispatch) interface. I'm not able to change that interface. I'd like to call it from a scripting language. I figure this would provide a nice quick way to invoke on the app. I initially tried this with Windows Powershell but ran into the following problem. I was able to create the object and invoke simple methods on it. However the interface for this app has methods which take out params. i.e. you pass in a reference to a variable and the server fills in the value. I couldn't get that to work. I finally gave up and decided it was just a limitation of Powershell, not being able to work with those out params. My next thought was to do it in python. I've been reading up on python and I've found a decent amount of into out there on doing OLE and I'm optimistic. But, I thought that I'd ask the question before digging too much farther into it... When calling an OLE Automation (IDispatch) server from python can I make use of out params defined by the interface? To get more specific, here's an example from the server's IDL for one of its methods. [id(15), helpstring(method GetSettingValue)] VARIANT_BOOL GetSettingValue(BSTR settingName, BSTR* settingValue); As you can see, you have to pass in an out param for settingValue. The server fills this in for you. And this is what I couldn't get to work in Powershell. Anyone know whether or not OLE from python will allow passing in out params? Do you think this will work? -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: accessing an OLE Automation (IDispatch) server from python which requires the use of out params
On 12/10/2012 2:13 PM, bitbucket wrote: I have an existing Windows application which provides an OLE Automation (IDispatch) interface. I'm not able to change that interface. I'd like to call it from a scripting language. I figure this would provide a nice quick way to invoke on the app. I believe the easiest way to do that is to install the pywin extensions http://sourceforge.net/projects/pywin32/?source=directory I assume it can handle out params. -- Terry Jan Reedy -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: accessing an OLE Automation (IDispatch) server from python which requires the use of out params
On Monday, December 10, 2012 3:58:33 PM UTC-5, Terry Reedy wrote: I believe the easiest way to do that is to install the pywin extensions http://sourceforge.net/projects/pywin32/?source=directory I assume it can handle out params. That definitely looks like a good starting point. Just hoping someone knows whether or not it'll support the out params before I spend too much time digging into it. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: accessing an OLE Automation (IDispatch) server from python which requires the use of out params
On 11/12/2012 8:39 AM, bitbucket wrote: On Monday, December 10, 2012 3:58:33 PM UTC-5, Terry Reedy wrote: I believe the easiest way to do that is to install the pywin extensions http://sourceforge.net/projects/pywin32/?source=directory I assume it can handle out params. That definitely looks like a good starting point. Just hoping someone knows whether or not it'll support the out params before I spend too much time digging into it. out params are best supported if the object supplied a typelib - then Python knows the params are out and does the right thing automagically. If out params are detected, the result of the function will be a tuple of (real_result, out_param1, ...) Even if no typelib is supported, you can access them with a little pain via the win32com.client.Dispatch() object. You might like to follow up to the python-wi...@python.org mailing list where many people will be able to help. HTH, Mark -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
