...one of the most highly
regarded and expertly designed C++ library projects in the
world.
— Herb Sutter and Andrei
Alexandrescu, C++
Coding Standards
QuickStart |
The Boost Python Library is a framework for interfacing Python and C++. It allows you to quickly and seamlessly expose C++ classes functions and objects to Python, and vice-versa, using no special tools -- just your C++ compiler. It is designed to wrap C++ interfaces non-intrusively, so that you should not have to change the C++ code at all in order to wrap it, making Boost.Python ideal for exposing 3rd-party libraries to Python. The library's use of advanced metaprogramming techniques simplifies its syntax for users, so that wrapping code takes on the look of a kind of declarative interface definition language (IDL).
Following C/C++ tradition, let's start with the "hello, world". A C++ Function:
char const* greet()
{
return "hello, world";
}
can be exposed to Python by writing a Boost.Python wrapper:
#include <boost/python.hpp>
using namespace boost::python;
BOOST_PYTHON_MODULE(hello)
{
def("greet", greet);
}
That's it. We're done. We can now build this as a shared library. The resulting DLL is now visible to Python. Here's a sample Python session:
>>> import hello
>>> print hello.greet()
hello, world
Next stop... Building your Hello World module from start to finish...
Copyright © 2002-2003 David Abrahams
Copyright © 2002-2003 Joel de Guzman
Permission to copy, use, modify, sell and distribute this document
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