Adding .Net support in ActivePython

ActiveState ActivePython

          ActiveState's ActivePython is the industry-standard Python distribution available for Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, Solaris, AIX and HP-UX. Currently it is not providing default support for execution or calling .Net modules which is similar to the behavior of CPython. But ActivePython has support for calling win32 APIs from win32 dlls using pywin32 module.

 Python for .Net

         Python for .NET is a package that gives Python programmers nearly seamless integration with the .NET Common Language Runtime (CLR) and provides a powerful application scripting tool for .NET developers.Python.Net binaries available for download in  https://github.com/geographika/PythonDotNet 

Adding .Net support in ActivePython
          We can add support for .Net modules in ActivePython by installing python.Net in ActivePython folder.

Installing Python.Net into ActivePython

ActivePython root folder is the folder where Active python is installed (Usually active python installed in C:\Python27 folder). Python.Net binary files are Python.Runtime.dll, Python.Runtime.pdb and clr.pyd.

Follow the below steps to install python.net in active python.

• Download Python.net binaries from https://github.com/geographika/PythonDotNet. Make sure that you download the binaries compatible with ActivePython( 32 bit or 64 bit)
• Copy all the downloaded binary files to the folder rootfolder\DLLs (For E.g., C:\Pyhton27\DLLs)  

Examples

• ·         How to add reference to the .Net assemblies from python.net

                                                Import clr

                                                clr.AddReference ("System.Windows.Forms")

from System.Windows.Forms import MessageBox

MessageBox.Show ("hi")

• ·         How to call a function which has out parameter

o   I have function in C# named GetEmployeeName  in Employee class which has the below function definition.

string GetEmployeeName  (string id, out string errorMessage)

Here the function returns the name of the employee if we provide the unique id of the employee. If there is any error when retrieving the value, out parameter errormessage will hold the error message.

From python.net we can call this function as below

    import clr

    clr.AddReference(“EmployeeDB”)

     import Employee

     error=””

     emp = Employee()

    (empId, error)= emp .GetEmployeeName (“101”, error)

    print empId

  print error