I am trying to write a program that I hope to get working as a command-line app to start with, and then eventually use a windows service wrapper to call it as a service. Its purpose is to attach to an already running (not ours) service using an API DLL, where it will do houskeeping and monitoring tasks.
This is where it all gets strange. Although I can make calls into the API and do things proactively, when I register a callback for event notification, this callback doesn't get called. I am told that if I want event notifications, I must create a window and run a "message pump" on it, and pass the window handle to the API when I register my callback function. This is despite the fact that I don't want my service to ever display a window. I gather I don't have to act on any messages either, but somehow the API won't tell me about any events unless I do this. So I am trying to create a skeleton that will create a window and run a "Message Pump". This is fairly succesful, in that I can create the window and the API then magically calls my event handler. But I want to be able to stop my service on demand, and this involved killing the message pump loop and destroying the window. I can't figure out how to do that. Problem 1: If I have another thread call DestroyWindow after a delay, it gets an error "permission denied". I really can't see why. Problem 2: I thought that maybe catching some kind of message might help. I have tried registering both a message-map and a wndProc handler. In both instances (see the code below) I don't get the WM_CREATE message that I hope to see first. Also, if I use the wndProc method, the CPU slams to 100% and I seem to receive an infinite number of messages of some sort. Problem 3: I thought if I pump the messages using GetMessage and DispatchMessage in my own loop, I might be able to check a flag and exit the loop when required. But I can't figure out the callling arguments to these calls. Below is the code I have done so far. I have stripped to as simple as I can make it. I would really appreciate some guidance or links to articles. I am struggling to understand even the basics, I think. The Cog. import win32gui import win32api import win32con import traceback, time, threading def onCreate(): print 'GOT WM_CREATE' def onDestroy(): print 'GOT WM_DESTROY' def wndProc(hwnd, msg, wparam, lparam): #print '~~~wndProc get a message' if msg == win32con.WM_CREATE: onCreate() if msg == win32con.WM_DESTROY: onDestroy() return 0 def registerWindowClass(): wc = win32gui.WNDCLASS() wc.hInstance = hinst wc.lpszClassName = "Eric the half-a-bee" messageMap = {win32con.WM_CREATE : onCreate , win32con.WM_DESTROY : onDestroy } wc.lpfnWndProc = messageMap # no messages if I do this #wc.lpfnWndProc = wndProc # infinite stream of messages if I do this return win32gui.RegisterClass(wc) def createWindow(registeredClassAtom): return win32gui.CreateWindow( registeredClassAtom, "This is a window", 0, 0, 0, win32con.CW_USEDEFAULT, win32con.CW_USEDEFAULT, 0, 0, hinst, None) hinst = win32api.GetModuleHandle(None) hwnd = createWindow(registerWindowClass()) win32gui.ShowWindow(hwnd, True) # I'll try hide it later win32gui.UpdateWindow(hwnd) # wait 10 secs then kill the window def timeKill(): print 'sleeping...' time.sleep(10) print 'killing' win32gui.DestroyWindow(hwnd) print 'starting killer timer' threading.Thread(target=timeKill).start() # This message pump traps the thread and never returns win32gui.PumpMessages() -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list