CherryPy not playing nicely with win32com?

[infidel]

I've been trying to get my CherryPy server to authenticate users
against our network. I've managed to cobble together a simple function
that uses our LDAP server to validate the username and password entered
by the user:

# ldap.py
from win32com.client import GetObject

ADS_SECURE_AUTHENTICATION = 1

def login_valid(username, password):
ldap = GetObject("LDAP:")
try:
ldap.OpenDSObject(
'LDAP://XXXXXXXX.US',
'XXXXXXXX\\' + username,
password,
ADS_SECURE_AUTHENTICATION
)
return True
except:
return False

This function works great if I call it from the interactive prompt:

import ldap
ldap.login_valid('mylogin', 'XXXXXXXX') # pass incorrect network password False ldap.login_valid('mylogin', 'XXXXXXXX') # pass correct network password

True

But as soon as I have my CherryPy filter call this exact same function,
I get an "invalid syntax" COM error:

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "C:\Python24\Lib\site-packages\cherrypy\_cphttptools.py", line
77, in _run
applyFilters('beforeMain')
File "C:\Python24\Lib\site-packages\cherrypy\_cphttptools.py", line
461, in applyFilters
method()
File "filters\authenticate.py", line 29, in beforeMain
if ldap.login_valid(username, password):
File "K:\src\py\XXXXXXXX\filters\ldap.py", line 6, in login_valid
ldap = GetObject("LDAP:")
File "C:\Python24\Lib\site-packages\win32com\client\__init__.py",
line 73, in GetObject
return Moniker(Pathname, clsctx)
File "C:\Python24\Lib\site-packages\win32com\client\__init__.py",
line 88, in Moniker
moniker, i, bindCtx = pythoncom.MkParseDisplayName(Pathname)
com_error: (-2147221020, 'Invalid syntax', None, None)

I don't get it. How can it be ok at the >>> prompt but invalid under
CherryPy?

[Irmen de Jong]

infidel wrote:

I've been trying to get my CherryPy server to authenticate users
against our network. I've managed to cobble together a simple function
that uses our LDAP server to validate the username and password entered
by the user:
[...]
moniker, i, bindCtx = pythoncom.MkParseDisplayName(Pathname)
com_error: (-2147221020, 'Invalid syntax', None, None)

I don't get it. How can it be ok at the >>> prompt but invalid under
CherryPy?

Just an idea: because in CherryPy it is running in multithreading mode?
If you are using threads together with COM stuff, you will have to
add pythoncom.CoInitialize() and pythoncom.CoUninitialize() calls
in your code -- for each thread.

--Irmen

[infidel]

> Just an idea: because in CherryPy it is running in multithreading mode?

If you are using threads together with COM stuff, you will have to
add pythoncom.CoInitialize() and pythoncom.CoUninitialize() calls
in your code -- for each thread.

That worked perfectly. Thanks a million!

I used to hate COM just because of our huge VB project. Now I can hate
it for this too!