[python-win32] dde trouble

Patrick Janssen patrick at janssen.name
Fri Jun 19 08:18:41 CEST 2009


Hi all,
I am having some trouble with controlling a Windows application through dde

The application in question is Ecotect:
http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/index?id=12602821&siteID=123112 . This
app provides a dde interface for scripting. The application
comes bundled with Lua, and this works fine. However, for various reasons, I
need to use Python, so I have been trying to get Python talking to Ecotect
using Marc Hammonds very nice win32 tools.

This seemed to work well, like this:

import win32ui
import dde
server = dde.CreateServer()
server.Create("TestClient")
conversation = dde.CreateConversation(server)
conversation.ConnectTo("Ecotect", "request")
conversation.Exec("model.new")

This opens up a new file in Ecotect. However, as I started to try some more
commands, I found that many of the dde command strings described in the
documentation are working with Lua, but not with Python / Win32. In
particular, the ones that are not working seem to be the ones that return a
value. For example:

conversation.Exec("get.app.computer")

returns an error message:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "D:\Documents\Eclipse\z_test_ecotect\test1.py", line 11, in <module>
    conversation.Exec("get.app.computer")
error: Exec failed

Any thoughts on how I might discover what is going wrong?
Does anyone know how I might be able to see the dde command strings that Lua
is sending to Ecotect (which all seem to work - I am thinking that there may
be an error in the documentation).

Regards
Patrick
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-win32/attachments/20090619/d442d028/attachment.htm>


More information about the python-win32 mailing list