embedding Python in COM server loaded with win32com

[Fozzie]

Hi,

I have a problem which is quite circular, and hopefully either someone
has encountered something similar or has a reason why this will not
work.

We have a COM library providing mathematics to various systems, most
functions are hard-coded but we want to embed a scripting language to
allow arbitrary functions to be used in the numeric engines within the
library, and am using Python for this.

This seems to work fine called from standalone apps, and from VB,
however, Python scripts, which access the scripts via win32com.client
fail in the embedding code in C++ whenever I attempt to call
PyImport_AddMod ule.

As a concrete example, consider the following minimal interface,
(created using an ATL project in VC7), which has a single property,
the user supplied script, and a single function 'findRoot', which in
this case is nothing more than an indicator that the embedding worked,

-------------------------------------------------------------
STDMETHODIMP CMinEmbed::get_ script(BSTR* pVal)
{
USES_CONVERSION ;
*pVal = SysAllocString( A2OLE(__script. c_str()));
return S_OK;
}
STDMETHODIMP CMinEmbed::put_ script(BSTR newVal)
{
USES_CONVERSION ;
__script = std::string( OLE2A( newVal));
return S_OK;
}
STDMETHODIMP CMinEmbed::find Root(DOUBLE* root)
{
std::string progress;
PyObject * main, * globals, * res, * func;

try {

progress = "calling PyInitialize";
if(!Py_IsInitia lized()) Py_Initialize() ;

progress = "get __main__ module";
main = PyImport_AddMod ule("__main__") ;

progress = "get __main__module dictionary";
globals = PyModule_GetDic t(main);

progress = "Run the script.";
res = PyRun_String(__ script.c_str(), Py_file_input, globals,
globals);

progress = "Get the function from main dictionary.";
func = PyDict_GetItemS tring(globals, "func");

progress = "test function, and return indicator";
if(NULL != func && PyCallable_Chec k(func)) {
*root = 1.0;
} else {
*root = -1.0;
}

progress = "clean up";
Py_XDECREF(res) ;
Py_Finalize();
return S_OK;

} catch(...) {
// SetFailString just sets the ISupportErrorIn fo interface
SetFailString(I ID_IMinEmbed, progress.c_str( ));
return E_FAIL;
}
}
-------------------------------------------------------------
When I build my server with the above method and run it at the Python
interpretor I get,

from win32com.client import Dispatch
s = Dispatch('minSe rver.MinEmbed')
s.script = 'def func(x) : return x*x'
s.findRoot()

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
File "<COMObject minServer.MinEm bed>", line 2, in findRoot
File "i:\1111\Python 24\lib\site-packages\win32c om\client\dynam ic.py",
line 251, in _ApplyTypes_
result = self._oleobj_.I nvokeTypes(*(di spid, LCID, wFlags, retType,
argTypes) + args)
pywintypes.com_ error: (-2147352567, 'Exception occurred.', (0, None,
'Failure to get main module', None, 0, -2147467259), None)

However, works fine from VB and standalone apps.

Is this approach even doable?
Thanks in advance
Dave Foster