IronPython and Windows Forms talk

The presentation in html version

TabbedImages application

• We got some good feedback after the presentation.
• To my surprise there were many people already playing with IronPython.
• What's even more surprising, there were some people that have already used Windows Forms.
• Watch the tabbedimages application, I'm going to extend it with some interesting features.
• If you browse the sources for it, you'll find some simple tests in the MainTest.py.
• They exist because I'm afraid I'm not able to not do Test Driven Development.

Iron Python on Balloons

Have you ever wondered how to create a simple application that uses balloons to notify about some events? Below is the result of my spike on how I could use IronPython and Windows Forms to create such thing.



Basically, it should:

1. show an icon in the system tray

NotifyIcon is a class that allows you to display an icon in the system tray.


2. display a tooltip every n milliseconds

It was easily achieved by using the notifyIcon.ShowBalloonTip method and the Timer (and its Tick event) class.


3. have a context menu that allows you to exit the application

The ContextMenu class.

Just paste the code to the Main.py file, prepare a test.ico file and run it with:

ipy Main.py

import clr

clr.AddReference("System.Windows.Forms")
clr.AddReference("System.Drawing")
from System.Drawing import Icon
from System.Windows.Forms import (Application, ContextMenu, 
                                  MenuItem, NotifyIcon, Timer)


class Main(object):

    def __init__(self):
        self.initNotifyIcon()
        timer = Timer()
        timer.Interval = 60000
        timer.Tick += self.onTick
        timer.Start()
    

    def initNotifyIcon(self):
        self.notifyIcon = NotifyIcon()
        self.notifyIcon.Icon = Icon("test.ico")
        self.notifyIcon.Visible = True
        self.notifyIcon.ContextMenu = self.initContextMenu()

    
    def onTick(self, sender, event):
        self.notifyIcon.BalloonTipTitle = "Hello, I'm IronPython"
        self.notifyIcon.BalloonTipText = "Who are you?"
        self.notifyIcon.ShowBalloonTip(1000)

        
    def initContextMenu(self):
        contextMenu = ContextMenu()
        exitMenuItem = MenuItem("Exit")
        exitMenuItem.Click += self.onExit
        contextMenu.MenuItems.Add(exitMenuItem)
        return contextMenu
        

    def onExit(self, sender, event):
        self.notifyIcon.Visible = False
        Application.Exit()     
   
        
if __name__ == "__main__":
    main = Main()
    Application.Run()

Update:Marcin shows how to achieve the same with Groovy.