comtypes

About

comtypes is a lightweight Python COM package, based on the ctypes FFI library.

comtypes allows to define, call, and implement custom and dispatch-based COM interfaces in pure Python.

This package works on Windows only.

• comtypes==1.1.7 is the last version supporting Windows CE.

Available on Python 3.7-3.12.

• comtypes==1.2.1 is the last version supporting Python 2.7 and 3.3-3.6.
• In Python 3.7.6 and 3.8.1, comtypes would not work as reported in GH-202.
  This bug has been fixed in Python >= 3.7.7 and >= 3.8.2.
• In Python 3.8 and 3.9, some of comtypes functionalities may not work correctly as reported in GH-212.
  This bug has been fixed in Python >= 3.10.10 and >= 3.11.2.

Where to get it

The source code is currently hosted on GitHub at: https://github.com/enthought/comtypes

An installer for the latest released version is available at the Python Package Index (PyPI).

# PyPI
pip install comtypes

Dependencies

comtypes requires no third-party packages to run - this is truly pure Python package.

Optional features include the follows...

• to process arrays as numpy's ndarray
• type hints be interpreted by mypy or several static type checkers

But these third-parties are not required as a prerequisite for runtime.

Community of the developers

Tracking issues, reporting bugs and contributing to the codebase and documentation are on GitHub at: https://github.com/enthought/comtypes

Ongoing plans

GetModule will also generate static typing for methods and properties

comtypes.client.GetModule generates Python wrapper modules from a COM type library, containing interface classes, coclasses, constants, and structures. The .py files are generated in the comtypes.gen package.

In the current comtypes specification, type checkers could not infer static type information from generated modules codebase, since methods and properties were mostly defined and implemented by metaclasses.
In future release, in generated modules, static typing will be added to part of methods and properties.

Static type information is added only under if TYPE_CHECKING: blocks. Consequently, it will not override any methods defined with metaclasses at runtime, ensuring that the runtime behavior remains unchanged.

Please refer to the GitHub issue for details.

In friendly modules, the names that were used as aliases for ctypes.c_int will be used for enumeration types implemented with enum

comtypes.client.GetModule generates two Python modules in the comtypes.gen package with a single call.

A first wrapper module is created with a long name that is derived from the type library guid, version number and lcid. It contains interface classes, coclasses, constants, and structures.
A second friendly module is created with a shorter name derived from the type library name itself. It imports items from the wrapper module, and will be the module returned from GetModule.

In the current comtypes specification, if a COM type kind is defined as an enumeration type, that type name is used as an alias for ctypes.c_int in the wrapper module, and that symbol is imported into the friendly module.
In future release, in friendly modules, their names will no longer be aliases for c_int. Instead, they will be defined as enumerations implemented with enum.

When imported into the friendly module, the wrapper module will be aliased with an abstracted name (__wrapper_module__). This allows users to continue using the old definitions by modifying the import sections of their codebase.

Please refer to the GitHub issue for details.

For Enterprise

Available as part of the Tidelift Subscription.

This project and the maintainers of thousands of other packages are working with Tidelift to deliver one enterprise subscription that covers all of the open source you use.

Learn more.

Documentation:

The documentation is currently hosted on pythonhosted at: https://pythonhosted.org/comtypes