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

There is a lot of information on the wiki - if you're just getting started with Python a good first reference is the Python on Symbian book hosted on this wiki. It takes you through from installing Python, the language basics through to advanced topics like networking, multimedia and using device sensors.

Latest News

11 February 2010: Python for Symbian 2.0.0 has been officially released.
3 December 2008: Python for Symbian 1.4.5 has been officially released.
3 June 2008: Nokia Developer Publishes an eLearning module for Python for Symbian

Installation

See Archived: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 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 Python on Symbian provides an excellent introduction.

Creating Stand-alone Applications

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

Python on Symbian/16. Standalone Applications (Creating applications from S60 3rd Edition and all later versions of Symbian)
Guide for creating a standalone application in S60 2rd edition
More links to creating a standalone app

Documentation

Python on Symbian online book: Python on Symbian.

API reference documentation is available in the SDK, which you can download from here.

Extension modules

Python for Symbian supports most of the standard Python modules for the version on which it is based (2.5.1 in the case PySymbian 1.9.0 and later). These modules and some others (changed to adapt them to Python for Symbian) are written in pure Python code.

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

The sources for PySymbian are available on Maemo garage. There is no good documentation on how to compile PySymbian from source.

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.

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