accessing an OLE Automation (IDispatch) server from python which requires the use of "out params"

[Mark Hammond]

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-win32 at 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
>