Category:PySymbian

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Overview

Python on Symbian is Nokia's port of the Python language to the Symbian smartphone platform. In addition to the standard features of the Python language, PySymbian provides access to many of the smartphone's functions, such as camera, contacts, calendar, audio recording and playing, TCP/IP and Bluetooth communications and simple telephony.

Python for Symbian is Nokia Open Source, under Apache 2 and Python licenses. You can download the source for the latest release from Maemo Garage. Moreover, the previous stable release can be downloaded from Sourceforge

Latest News

11 February 2010: Python for Symbian 2.0.0 has been officially released.

New Features Added in PySymbian 2.0.0 are:

Repeat support in 4-way directional pad
Lot of memory leaks in the interpreter code is fixed.
appuifw.app.track_allocations can be set if the interpreter should track all memory allocations and then free the memory which was not explicitly released before application exit. To debug memory leaks in 3rd party extension modules set the value to false.
All the Pyds that have zero UID will be assigned with the applications UID at the time of packaging. As a result, Python applications can now be symbian signed. This opens the door for submitting Python applications to OVI Store.
PDF documentation is available in the installer/archive.
API cleanup in the SensorFW module.
Python Runtime and application sis can be on different drives. The limitation of both should be installed on the same drive is eliminated.
Touch support added for GLCanvas UI Control
4-way directional pad support in landscape mode
Different flavors of Scriptshell application can coexist on the device.
On the below mentioned devices Python runtime and its dependencies will be installed automatically when the Python applications is started:

6220 classic, N86 8 MP, N85, 6720 classic, 6730 classic, N96, 5730 XpressMusic, N78, 5630 XpressMusic, E52, E55, 6710 Navigator, E75, N79, 5800 XpressMusic, 5530 XpressMusic, 5230, X6 and N97 mini

3 December 2008: Python for Symbian 1.4.5 has been officially released.

New Features Added in PySymbian 1.4.5 are:

Added the possibility to run Python code in threads that weren't started by Python itself, by adding the functions InitializeForeignThread() and FinalizeForeignThread() to the CSPyInterpreter class. For details see the section "Python/C API Extensions" of the API Reference.
Added timeout support to globalui module.
The positioning module has been made safe to use from several threads.
Support for the "description" field has been added to the calendar module.

3 June 2008: Nokia Developer Publishes an eLearning module for Python for Symbian

Installation

See [Python on Symbian/01. Introduction] which explains what packages to get, how to push scripts to the phone, using the emulator, using the Bluetooth console etc.

Applications

See Nokia Open Source and Python on Symbian applications. Also, grabbing the package source is useful, as there are some interesting sample applications embedded in the source tree. If you are a novice trying to figure out how to write your first program on a mobile phone then click "novice how to".

Creating Standalone Applications

Python has all the advantages of an interpreted language, but you can create standalone applications for Symbian. Here are some links.

Documentation

See Python Symbian documentation.

Python on Symbian online book: Python on Symbian.

Extension modules

Python for Symbian supports most of the standard Python 2.2 (or 2.5.1 in the case PySymbian 1.9.0) modules. These modules and some others (changed to adapt them to Python for Symbian) are written in pure Python code.

For a list of adapted python modules that are available see: Nokia Open Source.

Python for Symbian supports the Python/C API so you can create your own dynamically loadable extension modules (.PYD's) to extend the functionality of the interpreter. See Creating PySymbian 2.0 Extensions (Easy Approach) and Creating C Python extensions using Carbide.c++.

A list of native extension modules is available here.

Compiling PySymbian

So you want to "roll your own" PySymbian interpreter from source? Check out Compiling PySymbian.

Getting help

The Python for Symbian discussion board at Nokia Developer is THE place for chatting about PySymbian related matters. The archives of the board may already contain the answer you are looking for. Try the search function before asking and you may save lots of time.

For more informal discussions, try the Python on Symbian IRC channel.

Tutorials & Books

Tutorials

Python on Symbian platform eLearning.

Learn about Python, the open source programming language optimized for rapid application prototyping. It is an object-oriented scripting language that is easy to learn and use and supported on many platforms. This module gives students an idea of where and how the language can be used, and show how to write Python programs that run on Symbian. The module assumes some familiarity with object-oriented programming languages.

Python Training Course

A package containing a handy Python Workbook that describes the most important features in a simple yet complete way and sample scripts.

To get started with Python, read the Python 2.2.2 (PySymbian core) tutorial and library reference
Visit Croozeus.com for a large selection of guides and code examples that allow both beginners and experts to take advantage of the power of PySymbian. Also look for Pys60 Talks and PySymbian Featured Applications sections on the site. Read the PySymbian Community Blog to know the latest happenings in the world of PyS60.
To Develop rapid mobile applications using PySymbian visit mobapps which contains some good code examples and you can get a good knowledge of syntax used in python.
This "easy to learn" tutorial by mobilenin gives you a smooth start into learning to program in PySymbian - even without any prior knowledge of Python on Symbian.
A description with examples of the most basic Python and PySymbian features, for beginners: Basic Python Elements

Books

"Dive into Python" is an excellent book about Python programming.
"A Byte of Python" a novice in python needs to check go through basics, available in this book.
Mobile Python: Rapid prototyping of applications on the mobile platform
Python Pocket Reference is very useful, when you know what to do, but can't quite recall how to do it.

Code Examples for Python

ShareUI . . girishpadia

Simple deserializer for Python . . lpvalente

Other platforms

Other than Python for Symbian there are three more or less advanced Python versions for UIQ:

Python for UIQ
A very old version for UIQ based on Python 2.3.3 The console version already builds for other devices, including Series 90, Series 80 and S60 first Edition.
Python for UIQ 2.1 and 3.0
This is Python for UIQ 2.1 and UIQ 3 v0.1 (hereafter PyUIQ). This preliminary port is based on Python for Symbian (hereafter PySymbian) port created by Nokia which is based on Python 2.2.2.
Jython for UIQ
It's Python over PersonalJava.