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've never used these APIs, but digging through the code, it looks like the class passed in is used to register the name of the class in the registry, so you can't do any initialization of your own. But there's a method called GetServiceCustomOption that may help:

http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-win32/2006-April/004518.html

Answer 2

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