A Good Mix 36: Jim Hugunin, Selenium Two, Embedding IronPython & IronPython with Expression Blend

By Michael Foord -
Another collection of IronPython and DLR related articles from recent weeks.

Jim Hugunin is a bit of a Python veteran. As well as being the creator of two implementations of Python (Jython and IronPython), he also started the Numpy project (back when it was called Numeric). Not long ago he was swallowed by Microsoft, who also took on the development of IronPython and turning it into the Dynamic Language Runtime.

In this video interview Jim explains not only how he got involved in Python, but also what he has been up to recently.
One of the ways that .NET helps you separate your visual design from your application logic is through XAML; an XML based declarative language that can be used with both Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) and Silverlight.

Naturally there are design tools that will generate XAML. Visual Studio is one of them, but the best one is Expression Blend. XAML has features that make it particularly suited for integration with statically typed languages (statically binding events to your code in your XAML for example), but it can still be used with IronPython - slurping up the XAML dynamically at runtime (including generating or transforming XAML) with the XamlReader.

Simon Segal has been looking at how he can use both Expression Blend and Visual Studio with his IronPython projects:
Finally I decided to synchronize two separate .XAML files in each of the two different projects, so the challenge was to find the most unobtrusive way of working in both IDE’s and easily syncing the the .XAML files after edits had been made. Given that one of the IDE’s was running a dynamic language with a REPL built in, I thought it shouldn’t prove too difficult.
...
Like I said its far from a perfect solution and to be frank it’s somewhat annoying however my frustration is another thing altogether if I’m faced with doing all my layout and design in Visual Studio – so I will live with it for the moment. Hopefully the IronPython team and or the Expression Blend Team can find a solution that flows changes through more seamlessly in the short term and the perhaps in the long term allow us to open IronPython and IronRuby projects in Blend.
By the way if your wondering about the codename of the project that drove this adventure (PONGO) – the answer is yes if you guessed that it’s something that revolves around IronPython and MongoDB and I will be blogging about that more in the coming weeks.



Selenium is probably the best known / most widely used web testing tools and it supports a host of different languages. At Resolver Systems we've used the .NET Remote Control for Selenium from IronPython for quite a while. This article is a tutorial on using Selenium 2 with IronPython and Internet Exploder:
This tutorial is to show how to use the .NET Selenium 2 with dynamic languages that run on the .NET Common Language Runtime. This tutorial uses IronPython.
To complete this tutorial you will need to have IronPython installed and you will also need to download the .NET Bindings from Google Code
This tutorial will not be using the Remote Driver and it will be using the InternetExplorerDriver as this is the only complete browser at the moment that doesn't need to be built from the Repository.
Yes, over the years I've been making entries in this blog we've seen a whole host of blog entries showing examples of embedding IronPython in .NET applications, but it is always fun when another developer discovers just how easy it is:
A requirement I have in an app I am writing is to allow the administrator to set up formulas which can be calculated at runtime. The client app is completely disconnected from Enterprise Core Objects, it uses a (query/command)->response approach so I didn’t want to expose OCL on the client, I also didn’t want to use OCL because I didn’t want arbitrary browsing of the model.
So I have been looking at IronPython – and I like it! I’m not going to go into details of what this code does, I’m just going to paste it so that you may take a look. In short the requirement is for the Admin to be able to retrieve values from the DB by name and perform whatever logic they wish in order to return a decimal result.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Extending Abobe Flash Player and AIR with Python and Ruby

By Michael Foord -
An intriguing blog entry about an Adobe experimental project. It is a C/C++ cross- compiler for the flash player and AIR. This means that you can (will be able to?) cross-compile the Python / Ruby/ lots of other language runtimes and then run them in Flash. The blog entry contrasts this approach to the DLR which requires the re-implementation of dynamic languages - hence IronPython and IronRuby. The project is already beyond proof-of concept, they even have Quake III cross-compiled and running in Flash. Extending Adobe Flash Player and AIR with C/C++ Cross-Compiler Quake 3 has already been ported to managed code , but this is even more impressive. Whether the Python interpreter can be cross-compiled to run on top of another runtime (with completely different basic types), without changing the language semantics at all, has yet to be proved - but it is a very interesting project. (It also means that Python/Ruby will possibly be enabled only by additional optional downloads - but don'
Read more

Should Python Projects Support IronPython and Jython?

By Michael Foord -
The maintainers of the Spring Framework for Python ( Spring Python ) wonder how much of a priority it is to have compatibility with platforms other than CPython. In other words, should they support IronPython and Jython - and if so what should they do about their C extension dependencies? This question sparks a good discussion and is relevant to many other Python projects and applications: Need for supporting IronPython, Jython? " One of the topics on my mind recently, as we consider refactoring the core container, is how we ensure that when we introduce internal dependencies, such as possibly the Amara libraries for XML processing, what secondary constraints we might be introducing. " " For example, Amara represents a very pythonic and therefore simple to read and use approach to developing XML processing, such as our very own XML application configuration parsers. So from that perspective, things are very attractive. But then you ask the question, "can I run this
Read more

Further Adventures of the Debugger

By Michael Foord -
Harry Pierson (Microsoft IronPython PM) has been experimenting with writing an IronPython debugger ( ipydbg ) on top of the .NET MDbg APIs. When we last left him , he had implemented Just My Code (JMC) support allowing you to step into IronPython code. Since then he has made a lot of progress including a colourful REPL (interactive console) and solving some difficult problems around getting to real values behind boxed IronPython variables (needed for showing local variables). He has blogged extensively on what he has been up to (more recent posts last): Showing Source Code Colorful Console IronPython ConsoleColorMgr (the colorful console code pulled out into a separate IronPython module) A Little Hack...err...Cleanup Getting Local Variables Displaying Values Command Routing Getting Arguments REPL Console A lot of functionality is now present. In the command routing entry Harry outlines the seven commands supported by the debugger so far: Continue, Quit, Show Stack Trace, Show Locals,
Read more