[python-win32] Office Research Task Pane from Python - only server-side?

[Mickel Grönroos]

Hi again!

Thanks for the pointers, Graeme. I'm not certain, though, that I need
to do any client-side programming at all to be able to create a
service for the Research Task Pane. I live under the impression that
the Microsoft Office app (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, ...) handles all
tasks pertaining to the document and to the sending and receiving of
SOAP packages from the web service. In other words, I should only need
to write a *server-side* module (the web service) that knows how to
communicate with the Office app (the client). If I am not mistaken,
this web service can be written in any language (as the communication
with the client is XML based).

There are two reasons why I am so eager to implement the web service
in Python (and not in VB or C# where this would probably be really
easy as code examples exist): First of all, I have some other Python
resources that I would like to access from the web service I am
creating and I do not want to port these to another language. And
secondly, my web hosting provider runs Linux and has Python already
nicely installed on the server computer.

Any further ideas or code snippets on using Python for creating a
server-side web service that implements the Registration and Query
functions required by Microsoft would be much appreciated!

Kind regards from rainy Helsinki,

/Mickel G.

Graeme Glass wrote:
>I have never used the Research Task Pane or access it via any programming or
>scripting language, so I have no idea if this would work, but I would assume
>that it would be like accessing any other object and attribute using
>win32com. (That is if it is wrapped in win32com package)
>
>IE:
>import win32com.client
>word = win32com.client.Dispatch("Word.Application")
>
>Then access the relevant calls you need from word
>
>if you look here -
>http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dno2k3ta/html/odc_customizingtheresearchpane.asp
>you can see some example in VB, which will give you the hints as to the
>names of methods and attribute.
>
>Hope this helps some.
>
>Graeme