Month: April 2017

Calling C++ Classes from Python, with ctypes…

I recently found myself needing to call a C++ class from within Python. I didn’t want to call a separate process (as I had previously when using Thrift – see Using Apache Thrift for Python & C++); but rather to call a C++ library directly.

Before I go on I should say that there are a lot of different ways to do this is Python – and I’ve picked one that worked for me. Other techniques are available – and opinion seems quite divided as to which (if any) technique is ‘best’.

To start with we have our C++ class, written in the usual way.

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Simple Python Hello World with Alexa

I’ve recently got myself an Amazon Echo Dot; Amazon’s speech-based, voice-controlled device using Amazon’s Alexa, digital assistant. They’re pretty nice devices; and they’re quite fun to play with (and not too expensive either) – though I’ve not had it long enough to say if it’s actually useful yet…

Obviously the first thing that I did with it was to try to write some code for it. (Actually that’s not quite true – the actual first thing that I did with it was to run through all of the many, funny and often very geeky, easter eggs that have been baked into the system. I think my personal favourite is “Alexa who is the mother of Dragons?” – closely followed by “Alexa: Tea. Earl Grey. Hot.”). But I digress…

Coding for Alexa is actually pretty easy; and appealingly for an old-school back-end programmer like me: there are no visual user-interfaces to worry about. It’s all done with simple JSON; in the form of a pretty simple web application. Perhaps more interestingly there’s no need to worry about the server for that application – since it’s ideally suited for using Amazon’s AWS Lambda Functions.

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