Python Bindings for EFL

TOC?

About

Python bindings live under trunk/BINDINGS/python and are actively maintained. They might not cover 100% of C features, but covers enough to enable lots of eye candy applications such as  Canola2 Media Player,  OpenMoko's Paroli, Edje Editor, Arduino-EFL Ardy and others.

The commonly used EFL libraries have python bindings. Some of the rarely used features are not mapped. Written by experienced Python developers, it tries to be as "Pythonic" as possible, while exposing API similar to C to help knowledge and documentation reuse.

Supported Libraries

Lib Category	Library	Function	Description	Coverage (*)
Core	Evas	Graphics	Canvas object and rendering	Good, Textblock is barebones
Core	Edje	Graphics	Higher level graphical object abstraction	Good
Core	Eina	Utility	Data structures and utilities	?
Core	Eet	Utility	Data encoding and decoding to and from files or memory	?
Core	Ecore	System	Core loop and OS interfacing libraries	Good (ecore, ecore.evas), file/imf/x are barebones
Core	Efreet	System	Freedesktop.org standards compliance	?
Core	E_Dbus	System	DBus usage convenience library	Barebones (links python-dbus to main loop, everything else is left to python-dbus)
Core	Eeze	System	UDev access library	?
Core?	Embryo	Utility?	Embedded Small Interpreter	?
Extra	Elementary	Graphics	Widget set library	Good (less used widgets missing)
Extra	Emotion	Graphics	Media playback integration library	Full
Extra	Eio	Utility	Efficient I/O over file system (cp, mv, rm, stat, ls...)	?
Extra	Ethumb	Utility	Creates thumbnail images, videos and documents	Full (client)
Extra	Evil?	System	Windows compatibility layer	?
Extra	EWebKit	Web	Web runtime and browser core	?

(*) Coverage terms:

• Barebones - just started
• Essential - covers the minimum
• Good - covers what most developers would use
• Full - everything has bindings

Details

Consider the following C code and the Python implementations:

Evas_Object *my_func(Evas *canvas)
{
   Evas_Coord x, y, w, h;
   Evas_Object *rect = evas_object_rectangle_add(canvas);
   evas_object_move(rect, 100, 200);
   evas_object_resize(rect, 50, 60);
   evas_object_geometry_get(rect, &x, &y, &w, &h);
   printf("%d %d %d %d\n", x, y, w, h);
   return rect;
}

def my_func(canvas):
   rect = evas.Rectangle(canvas)
   rect.move(100, 200)
   rect.resize(50, 60)
   print rect.geometry_get()
   return rect

def my_func(canvas):
   rect = evas.Rectangle(canvas, geometry=(100, 200, 50, 60))
   print rect.geometry
   return rect

As seen, we tried to provide C-like api, but also provide excellent Python features, such as properties, constructor parameters and other things that make sense, like geometry_set(), pos_get() and size_get() that are not present in C. Take a look at  documentation for more!

Getting ready to use it

Code lives in SVN under trunk/BINDINGS/python. It was written using  Cython tool, so it's required to build from SVN. These are the instructions for Debian based systems:

# Before start: be sure to have EFL development files installed, either
# from SVN, tarballs or binary packages that provides pkg-config (*.pc) files
# as well as headers and development assets.

# get dependencies (varies from system to system):
sudo apt-get install build-essential pkg-config cython

svn checkout http://svn.enlightenment.org/svn/e/trunk/BINDINGS/python  python-efl
cd python-efl

# 1. install to /usr (needs root):
./autogen.sh --prefix=/usr ; make ; sudo make install

# 2. install to $HOME/usr (needs {{{$PYTHONPATH}}} set):
./autogen.sh --prefix=$HOME/usr ; make ; make install

# please note that some cython versions (< 0.12?) have problems with CFLAGS="-O0". So compile the bindings with CFLAGS="-O2" if you get strage segfaults.

Learn it

API documentation is available at  http://staff.get-e.org/~barbieri/python-efl-api/, it is automatically generated using  epydoc, you can generate it yourself! As recommended by Python, documentation is built-in into code with pydoc strings, so from interpreters one can call help(evas.Canvas) or on any other class, function, method or object (after all, these are all objects in python ;-P) to get its documentation.

Walk through tutorials: to be done

Catches, tips and tricks: see Python/Catches, be sure to read it and not fall into traps!