What can you do with COM/ActiveX in Python?

Question

I've read that it is possible to automate monthly reports in Crystal Reports with COM/ActiveX. I'm not that advanced to understand what this is or what you can even do with it.

I also do a lot of work with Excel and it looks like you also use COM/ActiveX to interface with it.

Can someone explain how this works and maybe provide a brief example?

Answer 1

First you have to install the wonderful pywin32 module.

It provides COM support. You need to run the makepy utility. It is located at C:\...\Python26\Lib\site-packages\win32com\client. On Vista, it must be ran with admin rights.

This utility will show all available COM objects. You can find yours and it will generate a python wrapper for this object.

The wrapper is a python module generated in the C:\...\Python26\Lib\site-packages\win32com\gen_py folder. The module contains the interface of the COM objects. The name of the file is the COM unique id. If you have many files, it is sometimes difficult to find the right one.

After that you just have to call the right interface. It is magical :)

A short example with excel

import win32com.client

xlApp = win32com.client.Dispatch("Excel.Application")
xlApp.Visible=1

workBook = xlApp.Workbooks.Open(r"C:\MyTest.xls")
print str(workBook.ActiveSheet.Cells(i,1))
workBook.ActiveSheet.Cells(1, 1).Value = "hello"                
workBook.Close(SaveChanges=0) 
xlApp.Quit()