Python Programming On Win32

Using Python COM Objects From Word

There is another approach for incorporating Word. You can use Python as the COM server and Word as the client. We discussed the pros and cons of this approach with Excel at the end of Chapter 9; the same design considerations apply.

Using Word as a client, use Visual Basic for Applications to initialize a Python server and fetch the data. The most natural way to package this is to build a Word template that includes the code and the desired document elements. When a new document is created from the template, it connects to the Doubletalk COM server we built earlier, instructs it to load the data, fetches the tables of information it needs, and uses VBA code to place the data into the document. This approach has two advantages:

• VBA offers nice editing features like drop-down auto-completion, helping you to learn the Word object model quickly. Debugging is also easier (assuming you have separately tested your Python server, and the Word object model is what is giving you trouble).

• You can safely tie functions in your template to regions of text or tables in your template without needing to be too generic. Data preparation is Python’s job; formatting is Word’s.