running a COM server in Python

[Manoj Plakal]

Manoj Plakal wrote:
> Mark Hammond wrote:
>> Mark Barclay wrote:
>>
>>> Is there a way of coding a COM server that can be running before it 
>>> is accessed
>>> by a COM client? I'm not sure if this makes sense, but I'd like to 
>>> have a program
>>> running, that can be connected to, perhaps multiple times, without it 
>>> having to
>>> create multiple instances of teh server, just have multiple clients 
>>> using it.
>>
>> IIRC, it gets a little messy - you need to implement a LocalServer 
>> object, and add it to the running object table (ROT).  Searching old 
>> posts at groups.google.com is probably your best bet.
> 
>          Take a look at the CVS tree of qasid.sourceforge.net.
>          There's a small example of a wxPython GUI app that acts
>          as a COM server. The COMHostServer function in qasidserver.py
>          does the job of creating an instance of the server and
>          registering it in the ROT.


	   Whoops, I was referring to an old version of the code.
            You should look at file qasid_win32com.py, class
            QasidCOMHostThread, method QasidCOMHostServer (cross fingers).
            The sample GUI app is in testapp.py

            For the curious, Qasid is an idea I had for encapsulating
            platform-specific mechanisms for local intra-machine "desktop"
            RPC with a portable API. This is an API can be used by
            desktop apps to talk to each other for sending simple messages.
            Currently, you have to use platform-specific stuff
            like COM, or use XML-RPC/CORBA and implement a registration
            and lookup service, or do ad-hoc things like
            command-line parameters (Netscape/Opera/XMMS etc).

            The idea is to have a simple API wrapping
            the existing Win32 COM, AppleEvents, KDE DCOP and
            Gnome CORBA/ORBit. So far, there's the Win32 COM
            instantiation with a very thin API (start, register
            method, stop). There's a short blurb on qasid.sf.net
            about why CORBA and XML-RPC may not be a good idea
            for intra-machine (between desktop apps) communication,
            though they work great on the intra/internet. Haven't
            had too much time to work on this since the initial
            COM effort, but I do plan to get started on the
            Apple Events backend sometime soon.

            Manoj