comtypes
is a lightweight pure Python COM package based on the ctypes
foreign function interface library.
comtypes
allows you to define, call, and implement custom and dispatch-based COM interfaces in pure Python.
comtypes
requires Windows and Python 3.7 or later.
- Version 1.2.1 is the last version to support Python 2.7 and 3.3–3.6.
comtypes
does not work with Python 3.7.6 and 3.8.1 as reported in GH-202. This bug has been fixed in Python >= 3.7.7 and >= 3.8.2.- Certain
comtypes
functions may not work correctly in Python 3.8 and 3.9 as reported in GH-212. This bug has been fixed in Python >= 3.10.10 and >= 3.11.2.
comtypes
is available on PyPI and can be installed with pip
:
# PyPI
pip install comtypes
The source code is currently hosted here on GitHub.
comtypes
is a pure Python package — it has no additional required dependencies.
Optional functionalities can be enabled by installing:
numpy
, in order to process arrays asnumpy
'sndarray
.mypy
or other static type checkers, in order to interpret type hints.
None of these packages, however, are required in order to run comtypes
.
The GitHub repository is used for tracking issues, reporting bugs, and contributing to the codebase and documentation.
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.
A: The Microsoft Component Object Model (COM) is a technology that is unique to Windows and is not supported on other platforms.
The phrase "COM is a platform-independent" in the MS documentation means that COM maintains compatibility across different versions of Windows, and does NOT imply that it is supported on Linux or Mac.
For as long as COM is not supported outside of Windows, there is no plan to port comtypes
to other platforms.
Q: Why does cannot import name 'COMError' from '_ctypes'
error occur when using this package on platforms other than Windows?
A: The _ctypes
is part of the internal implementation of the ctypes
standard library that exists for Python on all platforms.
However, COMError
and COM-related features are only implemented in Python for Windows.
In cross-platform software development, care must be taken to ensure that codebases that depend on comtypes
do not execute in environments other than Windows.
Q: Despite a script that depends on comtypes
having run successfully before, a error (ImportError
, NameError
, or SyntaxError
) is raised now, and the same error occurs again and again.
A: Executing py -m comtypes.clear_cache
and then running the script again might resolve the problem.
When comtypes.client.GetModule
is called (either directly or indirectly), comtypes
generates Python module files.
If Python is forced to terminate or crashes in the middle of file generation, the codebase written to the file becomes partial.
When Python tries to import this unexecutable partial codebase module, an error occurs.
Executing py -m comtypes.clear_cache
identifies the directories where the "cache module files" are stored and deletes them.
After deleting these partial modules and running the script again, comtypes.client.GetModule
is called and executable modules are generated anew.
However, if the script implementation does not use comtypes.client.GetModule
or processes generated files, it may not be a solution.
The documentation is currently hosted here on PythonHosted.