[pywin32-bugs] [ pywin32-Feature Requests-1567449 ] Dynamic Cast of COM Pointers

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Feature Requests item #1567449, was opened at 2006-09-28 22:29
Message generated for change (Comment added) made by rupole
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Category: com
Group: Next Release (example)
>Status: Closed
>Resolution: Out of Date
Priority: 5
Private: No
Submitted By: Jeffrey C. Jacobs (timehorse)
Assigned to: Nobody/Anonymous (nobody)
Summary: Dynamic Cast of COM Pointers

Initial Comment:
I don't know how many other COM libraries do this, but
specifically with iTunes, the Interfaces defined for
tracks form a hierarchy (in python-speak):

class Track(Item):
    pass

class FileOrCDTrack(Track):
    pass

class URLTrack(Track):
    pass

The problem is, a number of interfaces are defined to
return a pointer to a Track interface when in fact one
can test the object and safely refer to it via a
derived interface.  For instance,
iTunesApp.CurrentTrack returns a Track interface
pointer, even if it is a FileOrCDTrack.   In fact, all
but 1 interface prevents the user from accessing the
derived class properties (which include a lot of new
features that are part of the base class in
AppleScript).  Direct Indexing by name, ID or playlist
order all return a pointer to the base interface. 
Thus, none of these allow access to the derived
attributes in FileOrCDTrack even if the track is indeed
a File or CD based track.  So the ONLY way to retrieve
the derived interface is to use the Enum method of the
LibraryPlaylist object and iterate through ALL the
tracks known, which in a large library can take an
astronomical amount of time.  The Enum method does
however properly return FileOrCDTrack interfaces when
appropriate.

The idea of the Dynamic Cast would therefore be to
allow the user to perform a C++ style dynamic_cast on
an interface to convert it to a different interface. 
In this example, one would take a track instance, call
it's 'kind' property to verify that it was a
FileOrCDTrack and then cast the interface pointer from
a Track interface to a FileOrCDTrack. 

----------------------------------------------------------------------

>Comment By: Roger Upole (rupole)
Date: 2006-11-18 11:56

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Since there are already two different ways to
accomplish this, closing as out of date.

       Roger


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Comment By: Stefan Schukat (sschukat)
Date: 2006-10-04 09:12

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Try 
from win32com.client import CastTo

FileTrack = CastTo(iTunesApp.CurrentTrack, "FileOrCDTrack")

this should help.



----------------------------------------------------------------------

Comment By: Roger Upole (rupole)
Date: 2006-09-28 23:16

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You should be able to do this using QueryInterface.
The attached code takes an IITTrack object and gets
an IITFileOrCDTrack interface from it.


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