Name completion on .NET and COM objects

[Wikström Sven]

Hi.

We're currently evaluating Wing IDE Professional 3.1.4-1 (rev 18789), and so far it seems as a big step up from old Pythonwin.

I have an issue with name completion on COM (win32com) and .NET (Pythonnet) objects. Completion works on Pythonwin but not on Wing. While Pythonwin lists all available attributes on these objects, Wing only shows the COM attributes i.e not the COM objects own attributes. Same applies to .NET object.

Ex. for COM late binding:

>>>
>>> import win32com.client
>>> excel = win32com.client.Dispatch("Excel.Application")
>>>
>>> # Pythonwin lists all available attributes when
>>> # hitting the "." after "excel"
>>> #  <here>
>>> #    |
>>> #    v
>>> excel.Application()

u'Microsoft Excel'
>>>
>>> # Using Wing you only get what seems to be COM low-level stuff.

Ex. .NET through Pythonnet
>>>
>>> import clr
>>> import System
>>> # Pythonwin lets us e.g select Math and PI.
>>> # Wing displays nothin...
>>> System.Math.PI
3.1415926535897931
>>>

NOTE: Its only the name completion that fails in Wing. Typing for instance "System.Math.PI" as above, returns the magic number PI from .NET.

Is this an unsupported and never gonna support feature in Wing, or have I just failed to setup Wing correct?

Greatful for any input.

Thanks!


/Sven
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[Wingware Support]

Wikström Sven wrote:

> I have an issue with name completion on COM (win32com) and .NET (Pythonnet) objects. Completion works on Pythonwin but not on Wing. While Pythonwin lists all available attributes on these objects, Wing only shows the COM attributes i.e not the COM objects own attributes. Same applies to .NET object.
>
> Ex. for COM late binding:
>>>> import win32com.client
>>>> excel = win32com.client.Dispatch("Excel.Application")
>>>>
>>>> # Pythonwin lists all available attributes when
>>>> # hitting the "." after "excel"
>>>> #  <here>
>>>> #    |
>>>> #    v
>>>> excel.Application()
> u'Microsoft Excel'
>>>> # Using Wing you only get what seems to be COM low-level stuff.
>
> Ex. .NET through Pythonnet
>>>> import clr
>>>> import System
>>>> # Pythonwin lets us e.g select Math and PI.
>>>> # Wing displays nothin...
>>>> System.Math.PI
> 3.1415926535897931

Is this in the editor or in either the interactive shell or debug probe?
  It should work in the shell or probe, but it won't work in the editor
because the editor relies on static analysis.

Thanks,

John
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[Wikström Sven]

Hi.

Thanks for the response.

I understand that it cannot work in the main editor window.
But it does not work in the interactive shell nor the probe either, for me at least.

Behaviour in Wings interactive shell:
>>>> import win32com.client
>>>> excel = win32com.client.Dispatch("Excel.Application")
>>>> excel.XXXXXX

Where "XXXXXX" is just a completion list of low-level COM stuff. I do not get name completion for the actual Excel COM object's attributes as with Pythonwin.

Do I need a special setup?

We would love to use Wing as it seems to be THE Python editor. We deal with COM and .NET quite a lot so this is the last question mark.

Thanks again!

/Sven

-----Original Message-----
From: Wingware Support [mailto:support@...]
Sent: den 10 oktober 2008 17:52
To: Wikström Sven
Cc: wingide-users@...
Subject: Re: [wingide-users] Name completion on .NET and COM objects


Wikström Sven wrote:

> I have an issue with name completion on COM (win32com) and .NET
> (Pythonnet) objects. Completion works on Pythonwin but not on Wing.
> While Pythonwin lists all available attributes on these objects, Wing
> only shows the COM attributes i.e not the COM objects own attributes.
> Same applies to .NET object.
>
> Ex. for COM late binding:
>>>> import win32com.client
>>>> excel = win32com.client.Dispatch("Excel.Application")
>>>>
>>>> # Pythonwin lists all available attributes when
>>>> # hitting the "." after "excel"
>>>> #  <here>
>>>> #    |
>>>> #    v
>>>> excel.Application()
> u'Microsoft Excel'
>>>> # Using Wing you only get what seems to be COM low-level stuff.
>
> Ex. .NET through Pythonnet
>>>> import clr
>>>> import System
>>>> # Pythonwin lets us e.g select Math and PI.
>>>> # Wing displays nothin...
>>>> System.Math.PI
> 3.1415926535897931

Is this in the editor or in either the interactive shell or debug probe?
  It should work in the shell or probe, but it won't work in the editor
because the editor relies on static analysis.

Thanks,

John
_________________________________________________
Wing IDE users list
http://wingware.com/lists/wingide

[Wingware Support]

Wikström Sven wrote:

> Thanks for the response.
>
> I understand that it cannot work in the main editor window.
> But it does not work in the interactive shell nor the probe either, for me at least.
>
> Behaviour in Wings interactive shell:
>>>>> import win32com.client
>>>>> excel = win32com.client.Dispatch("Excel.Application")
>>>>> excel.XXXXXX
>
> Where "XXXXXX" is just a completion list of low-level COM stuff. I do not get name completion for the actual Excel COM object's attributes as with Pythonwin.
>
> Do I need a special setup?
>
> We would love to use Wing as it seems to be THE Python editor. We deal with COM and .NET quite a lot so this is the last question mark.

 From reading the win32com sources, it looks like the Dispatch class
does things entirely via a __call__ method, and that doesn't ever
add the methods/etc for the wrapped class to the wrapper, so even
at runtime in the Debug Probe or Python Shell it's not possible for
Wing to determine what the methods should be.

I'm fairly sure that PythonWin must contain some special code to
handle these.  I haven't found the code there yet but it may
just introspect the COM classes directly.  Wing isn't set up to
special case these.

One way to work around this would be to generate *.py skeletons for the
COM objects you're using, store them on disk and create a wrapper for
each creation that is something like this:

def CreateExcelApplication():
   retval = win32com.client.Dispatch("Excel.Application")
   import excel_application_skeleton
   isinstance(retval, excel_application_skeleton.ExcelApplication)
   return retval

Then at point of use do the following instead of calling Dispatch
directly:

excel = CreateExcelApplication()

You'll should get both the names in the wrapper and the skeleton
when you do 'excel.'

We're planning on trying to make this kind of thing possible in
the future w/o altering code, but for now the above is the way
to handle this case.

Please let me know if you run into any problems with it, or there's
something I need to clarify.

Thanks,

--

Stephan Deibel
Wingware | Python IDE
Advancing Software Development

www.wingware.com

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