The Mouse Vs. The Python

Python is pretty easy to install on Windows, but sometimes you need to do a few extra tweaks to really get the most our your development environment. In this article, we will try to cover all the common things you might want to do or install to get an ideal Python Windows development workspace set up. Some of you might think that all you need to do is install Python and you’re done, but if you’re going to do Windows development, then you’ll need a few other packages to make it nicer. (more…)

Last week, there was an interesting thread on the PyWin32 mailing list about how to read Microsoft Access databases with Python without having Access actually installed. Vernon Cole had the solution, but I noticed that Google doesn’t seem to index the PyWin32 list very well, so I decided to write about it here. (more…)

A lot of websites are doing year-end retrospectives this week, so I thought you might find it interesting to know which articles on this blog were the most popular this year. Below you will find links to each article along with the page view count I got from Google Analytics:

1. A Simple Step-by-Step Reportlab Tutorial, 9,709 page views, posted 03/08/2010
2. Another Step-by-Step SqlAlchemy Tutorial Part 1, 7,746 page views, posted 02/03/2010
3. Another Step-by-Step SqlAlchemy Tutorial Part 2, 4,858 page views, posted 02/03/2010
4. Manipulating PDFs with Python and pyPdf, 4,511 page views, posted 05/15/2010
5. Python 101: Introspection, 4,473 page views, posted 10/14/2010
6. wxPython: Grid Tips and Tricks, 3,476 page views, posted 04/04/2010
7. wxPython: Creating a Simple MP3 Player, 3,401 page views, posted 04/20/2010
8. Python and Microsoft Office – Using PyWin32, 3,323 page views, posted 07/16/2010
9. wxPython and Threads, 3,183 page views, posted 05/22/2010

It would seem that SqlAlchemy and Reportlab are pretty popular topics. Are there any articles about either of these cool packages that you think I should write? As you can see, wxPython makes it into the top ten 3 times! What should I write about next regarding wxPython?

This upcoming year, I plan to write about some of the other GUI toolkits. Which one do you think I should do first? Tkinter, PySide, PyGUI or something else? What packages or standard libraries do you think I should cover? Feel free to let me know via the comments below or via my contact form (link at top). I’m looking forward to another year of Python tinkering and writing and I hope you are too! Thanks for your readership and encouragement this year!

The other day, there was a post on one of the mailing lists that I follow about accessing the Windows Event Logs. I thought that was an interesting topic, so I went looking for examples and found a pretty nice example on ActiveState. In this article, you’ll find out what I discovered. (more…)

Most typical users have used Microsoft Office. While Office may be the bane of tech support, we still have to deal with it. Python can be used to script (AKA automate) Office and make it easier for us or our users to use. It may not be as easy as recording a macro, but it’s close. For this article, you will learn how to use the PyWin32 module to access some of the Office programs and manipulate them with Python. Some forums say that you need to run PythonWin’s makepy utility on Microsoft Word (and Excel) before you can access Office applications. I don’t think I needed to do that to make it work though (at least, not with the 2007 version). However, PythonWin comes with the PyWin32, so if you do run into trouble, you can try it. (more…)

The other day, I received a request to create a script that could tell how long a Windows XP machine had been idle and to alert the user if it had been idle for a certain amount of time. I did a little research with Google and found a couple of ways to accomplish this feat. The only one I was able to get working was a ctypes example, so without further ado, let’s check it out! (more…)