winapi - Creating a python win32 service

Question

I am currently trying to create a win32 service using pywin32. My main point of reference has been this tutorial:

http://code.activestate.com/recipes/551780/

What i don't understand is the initialization process, since the Daemon is never initialized directly by Daemon(), instead from my understanding its initialized by the following:

mydaemon = Daemon
__svc_regClass__(mydaemon, "foo", "foo display", "foo description")
__svc_install__(mydaemon)

Where svc_install, handles the initalization, by calling Daemon.init() and passing some arguments to it.

But how can i initialize the daemon object, without initalizing the service? I want to do a few things, before i init the service. Does anyone have any ideas?

class Daemon(win32serviceutil.ServiceFramework):
    def __init__(self, args):
        win32serviceutil.ServiceFramework.__init__(self, args)
        self.hWaitStop = win32event.CreateEvent(None, 0, 0, None)

    def SvcDoRun(self):
        self.run()

    def SvcStop(self):
        self.ReportServiceStatus(win32service.SERVICE_STOP_PENDING)
        win32event.SetEvent(self.hWaitStop)

    def start(self):
        pass

    def stop(self):
        self.SvcStop()

    def run(self):
        pass

def __svc_install__(cls):
    win32api.SetConsoleCtrlHandler(lambda x: True, True)
    try:
        win32serviceutil.InstallService(
            cls._svc_reg_class_,
            cls._svc_name_,
            cls._svc_display_name_,
            startType = win32service.SERVICE_AUTO_START
            )
        print "Installed"
    except Exception, err:
        print str(err)

def __svc_regClass__(cls, name, display_name, description):

    #Bind the values to the service name
    cls._svc_name_ = name
    cls._svc_display_name_ =  display_name
    cls._svc_description_ = description
    try:
        module_path = sys.modules[cls.__module__].__file__
    except AttributeError:
        from sys import executable
        module_path = executable
    module_file = os.path.splitext(os.path.abspath(module_path))[0]
    cls._svc_reg_class_ = '%s.%s' % (module_file, cls.__name__)

Answer 1

I just create a simple "how to" where the program is in one module and the service is in another place, it uses py2exe to create the win32 service, which I believe is the best you can do for your users that don't want to mess with the python interpreter or other dependencies.

You can check my tutorial here: Create win32 services using Python and py2exe