The Python Papers, Vol. 3, No.

3 (2008)

Available online at http://ojs.pythonpapers.org/index.php/tpp/issue/view/10

Automatic C Library Wrapping

 Ctypes from the Trenches
Guy K. Kloss

Computer Science
Institute of Information & Mathematical Sciences
Massey University at Albany, Auckland, New Zealand
Email: G.Kloss@massey.ac.nz
At some point of time many Python developers  at least in computational
science  will face the situation that they want to interface some natively
compiled library from Python. For binding native code to Python by now a
larger variety of tools and technologies are available. This paper focuses on
wrapping shared C libraries, using Python's default Ctypes. Particularly tools
to ease the process (by using code generation) and some best practises will be
stressed. The paper will try to tell a stepbystep story of the wrapping and
development process, that should be transferable to similar problems.

Keywords:

Python, Ctypes, wrapping, automation, code generation.

Introduction

One of the grand fundamentals in software engineering is to use the tools that are
best suited for a job, and not to prematurely decide on an implementation. That is
often easier said than done, in the light of some complimentary requirements (e. g.
rapid/easy implementation vs. needed speed of execution or vs. low level access to
hardware).

extending

or

The traditional way [1] of binding native code to Python through

embedding

is quite tedious and requires lots of manual coding in C.

This paper presents an approach using the

part of Python since version 2.5.

Ctypes

package [2], which is by default

As an example the creation of a wrapper for the Little CMS colour management
library [3] is outlined. The library oers excellent features, and ships with ocial
Python bindings (using

SWIG

[4]), but unfortunately with several shortcomings

(incompleteness, un-Pythonic API, complex to use, etc.). So out of need and frustration the initial steps towards alternative Python bindings were undertaken.
An alternative would be to x or improve the bindings using

SWIG,

or to use

one of a variety of binding tools. The eld has been limited to tools that are widely
in use today within the community, and that are promising to be future proof as

Automatic C Library Wrapping

 Ctypes from the Trenches

well as not overly complicated to use. These are the contestants with (very brief )
notes for use cases that suit their particular strengths:

Use

Use

Ctypes
Boost.Python

[2], if you want to wrap pure C code very easily.

[5, 6], if you want to create a more complete API for C++

that also reects the object oriented nature of your native code, including
inheritance into Python, etc.

Use

cython

[7], if you want to easily speed up and migrate code from Python

SWIG

[4], if you want to wrap your code against several dynamic lan-

to speedier native code (Mixing is possible!).

Use

guages.

Of course, wrapper code can be written manually, in this case directly using

Ctypes

. This paper does not provide a tutorial on how

Ctypes

is used. The reader

should be familiar with this package when attempting to undertake serious library
wrapping. The

Ctypes tutorial

and

Ctypes reference

on the project web site [2] are

an excellent starting point for this. For extensive libraries and robustness towards
an evolving API, code generation proved to be a good approach over manual editing.

Boost.Python
Boost.Python

Code generators exist for

wrapping:

Py++

[8] (for

Ctypes
CtypesLib's h2xml.py

as well as for

) and

to ease the process of

[2]

and xml2py.py.

Three main reasons have inuenced the decision to approach this project using

ctypes:

Ctypes

Ubiquity of the binding approach, as

No compilation of native code to libraries is necessary.

is part of the default distribution.

Additionally, this

relieves one from installing a number of development tools, and the library
wrapper can be approached in a platform independent way.

The availability of a code generator to automate large portions of the wrapper

implementation process for ease and robustness against changes.

The next section of this paper will rst introduce a simple C example.

This

example is later migrated to Python code through the various incarnations of the
Python wrapper throughout the paper. Sect. 3 introduces how to facilitate the C
library code from Python, in this case through code generation.

Sect. 4 explains

how to rene the generated code to meet the desired functionality of the wrapper.
The library is anything but Pythonic, so Sect. 5 explains an object oriented Faade
API for the library that features qualities we love.
This paper only outlines some interesting fundamentals of the wrapper building
process. Please refer to the source code for more precise details [9].

Automatic C Library Wrapping

 Ctypes from the Trenches

The Example

The sample code (listing in Fig. 1) aims to convert image data from device dependent
colour information to a standardised colour space.

The input prole results from

a device specic characterisation of a Hewlett Packard ScanJet (in the ICC prole

HPSJTW.ICM). The output is in the standard conformant sRGB output colour space
as it is used for the majority of displays on computers. For this a built-in prole
from

LittleCMS

is used.

Input and output are characterised through so called ICC proles.

For the

input prole the characterisation is read from a le (line 8), and a built in output
prole is used (line 9). The transformation object is set up using the proles (lines
1113), specifying the colour encoding in the in- and output as well as some further
parameters not worth discussing here. In the for loop (lines 1521) the image data is
transformed line by line, operating on the number of pixels used per line (necessary
as array rows are often padded).
The goal is to provide a suitable and easy to use API to perform the same task
in Python.

Code Generation

Wrapping C data types, functions, constants, etc. with

Ctypes

is not particularly

dicult. The tutorial, project web site and documentation on the wiki introduce
this concept quite well.

But in the presence of an existing larger library, manual

wrapping can be tedious and error prone, as well as hard to keep consistent with
the library in case of changes. This is especially true when the library is maintained
by someone else. Therefore, it is advisable to generate the wrapper code.
Thomas Heller, the author of

CtypesLib

Ctypes

has implemented a corresponding project

that includes tools for code generation.

The tool chain consists of two

parts, the parser (for header les) and the code generator.

3.1

Parsing the Header File

The C header les are parsed by the tool h2xml. In the background it uses GCCXML,
a GCC compiler that parses the code and generates an XML tree representation.
Therefore, usually the same compiler that builds the binary of the library can be
used to analyse the sources for the code generation. Alternative parsers often have
problems determining a 100 % proper interpretation of the code. This is particularly
true in the case of C code containing pre-processor macros, which can commit
massively complex things.

Automatic C Library Wrapping

 Ctypes from the Trenches

#include "lcms.h"

3
4
5
6

int correctColour(void) {
cmsHPROFILE inProfile, outProfile;
cmsHTRANSFORM myTransform;
int i;

8
9

inProfile = cmsOpenProfileFromFile("HPSJTW.ICM", "r");

outProfile = cmsCreate_sRGBProfile();

11
12
13

myTransform = cmsCreateTransform(inProfile, TYPE_RGB_8,

outProfile, TYPE_RGB_8,
INTENT_PERCEPTUAL, 0);

15
16
17
18
19
20
21

for (i = 0; i < scanLines; i++) {

/* Skipped pointer handling of buffers. */
cmsDoTransform(myTransform,
pointerToYourInBuffer,
pointerToYourOutBuffer,
numberOfPixelsPerScanLine);
}

23
24
25

cmsDeleteTransform(myTransform);
cmsCloseProfile(inProfile);
cmsCloseProfile(outProfile);

27
28

return 0;
}
Figure 1: Example in C using the

3.2

LittleCMS

library directly.

Generating the Wrapper

In the next stage the parser tree in XML format is taken to generate the binding
code in Python using

Ctypes.

This task is performed by the xml2py tool. The gener-

ator can be congured in its actions by means of switches passed to it. Of particular
interest here are the

-k

and the

-r

switches. The former denes the kind of types

to include in the output. In this case the #defines, functions, structure and union
denitions are of interest, yielding
matically. The

-r

-kdfs.

Note: Dependencies are resolved auto-

switch takes a regular expression the generator uses to identify

symbols to generate code for. The full argument list is shown in the listing in Fig. 2
(lines 1115). The generated code is written to a Python module, in this case _lcms.
It is made private by convention (leading underscore) to indicate that it is
be used or modied directly.

not

to

Automatic C Library Wrapping

3.3

 Ctypes from the Trenches

Automating the Generator

Both h2xml and xml2py are Python scrips. Therefore, the generation process can be
automated in a simple generator script. This makes all steps reproducible, documents the used settings, and makes the process robust towards evolutionary (smaller)
changes in the C API. A largely simplied version is in the listing of Fig. 2.

1
2
3

# Skipped declaration of paths.

HEADER_FILE = lcms.h
header_basename = os.path.splitext(HEADER_FILE)[0]

5
6
7
8

h2xml.main([h2xml.py, header_path,
-c,
-o,
%s.xml % header_basename])

10
11
12
13
14
15

SYMBOLS = [cms.*, TYPE_.*, PT_.*, ic.*, LPcms.*, ...]

xml2py.main([xml2py.py, -kdfs,
-l%s % library_path,
-o, module_path,
-r%s % |.join(SYMBOLS),
%s.xml % header_basename]
Figure 2: Essential parts of the code generator script.
Generated code should

never

be edited manually.

As some modication will

be necessary to achieve the desired functionality (see Sect. 4), automation becomes
essential to yield reproducible results. Due to some shortcomings (see Sect. 4) of
the generated code however, some editing was necessary. This modication has also
been integrated into the generator script to fully remove the need of manual editing.

Rening the C API

Ctypes

in Python 2.5 it is not possible to add e. g. __repr__()

__
__
or
str () methods to data types. Also, code for loading the shared library in a
In the current version of

platform independent way needs to be patched into the generated code. A function
in the code generator reads the whole generated module _lcms and writes it back to
the le system, and in the course replacing three lines from the beginning of the le
with the code snippet from the listing in Fig. 3.

_setup (listing in Fig. 4) monkey patches 1 the class ctypes.Structure to include

a __repr__() method (lines 410) for ease of use when representing wrapped objects
for output. Furthermore, the loading of the shared library (DLL in Windows lingo)

1A

monkey patch is a way to extend or modify the runtime code of dynamic languages without

altering the original source code:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_patch

Automatic C Library Wrapping

 Ctypes from the Trenches

1
2

from _setup import *

import _setup

4
5

_libraries = {}
_libraries[/usr/lib/liblcms.so.1] = _setup._init()

Figure 3: Lines to be patched into the generated module _lcms.

is abstracted to work in a platform independent way using the system's default

search mechanism (lines 1213).

1
2

import ctypes
from ctypes.util import find_library

4
5
6
7
8
9
10

class Structure(ctypes.Structure):
def __repr__(self):
"""Print fields of the object."""
res = []
for field in self._fields_:
res.append(%s=%s % (field[0], repr(getattr(self, field[0]))))
return %s(%s) % (self.__class__.__name__, , .join(res))

12
13

def _init():
return ctypes.cdll.LoadLibrary(find_library(lcms))
Figure 4: Extract from module _setup.py.

4.1

Creating the Basic Wrapper

Further modications are less invasive. For this, the C API is rened into a module

c_lcms. This module imports

everything

from the generated._lcms and overrides or

adds certain functionality individually (again through monkey patching). These

are intended to make the C API a little bit easier to use through some helper
functions, but mainly to make the new bindings more compatible with and similar
to the ocial

SWIG

bindings (packaged together with

LittleCMS

). The wrapped

C API can be used from Python (see Sect. 4.2). Although, it still requires closing,
freeing or deleting from the code after use, and c_lcms objects/structures do not
feature methods for operations. This shortcoming will be solved later.

4.2

c lcms

Example

The wrapped raw C API in Python behaves in exactly the same way, it is just
implemented in Python syntax (listing in Fig. 5).

Automatic C Library Wrapping

 Ctypes from the Trenches

from c_lcms import *

3
4
5

def correctColour():
inProfile = cmsOpenProfileFromFile(HPSJTW.ICM, r)
outProfile = cmsCreate_sRGBProfile()

myTransform = cmsCreateTransform(inProfile, TYPE_RGB_8,

outProfile, TYPE_RGB_8,
INTENT_PERCEPTUAL, 0)

7
8
9
11
12
13
14
15
16

for line in scanLines:

# Skipped handling of buffers.
cmsDoTransform(myTransform,
yourInBuffer,
yourOutBuffer,
numberOfPixelsPerScanLine)

18
19
20

cmsDeleteTransform(myTransform)
cmsCloseProfile(inProfile)
cmsCloseProfile(outProfile)
Figure 5: Example using the basic API of the c_lcms module.

A Pythonic API

To create the usual pleasant batteries included feeling when working with code
in Python, another module  littlecms  was manually created, implementing the

Faade Design Pattern.

From here on we are moving away from the original C-like

API. This high level object oriented Faade takes care of the internal handling of
tedious and error prone operations. It also performs sanity checking and automatic
detection for certain crucial parameters passed to the C API. This has drastically
reduced problems with the low level nature of the underlying C library.

5.1

littlecms

Using

littlecms the API is now object oriented (listing in Fig. 6) with a

Example

doTransform() method on the myTransform object.

But there are a few more in-

teresting benets of this API:

Automatic disposing of C API instances hidden inside the Profile and

Transform classes.

Largely reduced code size with an easily comprehensible structure.

Redundant passing of information (e. g. the in- and output colour spaces) is
determined within the Transform constructor from information available in the

Profile objects.

Automatic C Library Wrapping

Uses

NumPy

 Ctypes from the Trenches

[10] arrays for convenience in the buers, rather than introducing

further custom types. On these data array types and shapes can be automatically matched up.

The number of pixels for each scan line placed in yourInBuffer can usually be
detected automatically.

PIL

Compatible with the often used

Several sanity checks prevent clashes of erroneously passed buer sizes, shapes,

[11] library.

types, etc. that would otherwise result in a crashed or hanging process.

from littlecms import Profile, PT_RGB, Transform

3
4
5
6

def correctColour():
inProfile = Profile(HPSJTW.ICM)
outProfile = Profile(colourSpace=PT_RGB)
myTransform = Transform(inProfile, outProfile)

8
9
10

for line in scanLines:

# Skipped handling of buffers.
myTransform.doTransform(yourNumpyInBuffer, yourNumpyOutBuffer)
Figure 6: Example using the object oriented API of the littlecms module.

Conclusion

Binding pure C libraries to Python is not very dicult, and the skills can be mastered
in a rather short time frame.

If done right, these bindings can be quite robust

even towards certain changes in the evolving C API without the need of very time
consuming manual tracking of all changes.

As with many projects for this, it is

vital to be able to automate the mechanical processes: Beyond the outlined code
generation in this paper, an important role comes to automated code integrity testing
(here: using

PyUnit

[12]) as well as an API documentation (here: using

Unfortunately, as

CtypesLib

Epydoc

[13]).

is still work in progress, the whole process did not go

as smoothly as described here. It was particularly important to match up working

versions properly between GCCXML (which in itself is still in development) and

CtypesLib.

In this case a current GCCXML in version 0.9.0 (as available in Ubuntu

Intrepid Ibex, 8.10) required a branch of

CtypesLib

through the developer's Subversion repository.

that needed to be checked out

Furthermore, it was necessary to

develop a x for the code generator as it failed to generate code for #defined oating
point constants. The patch has been reported to the author and is now in the source
code repository. Also patching into the generated source code for overriding some

Automatic C Library Wrapping

 Ctypes from the Trenches

features and manipulating the library loading code can be considered as being less
than elegant.
Library wrapping as described in this paper was performed on version 1.16 of the

LittleCMS

library. While writing this paper the author has moved to the now stable

version 1.17. Adapting the Python wrapper to this code base was a matter of about
15 minutes of work.

The main task was xing some unit tests due to rounding

dierences resulting from an improved numerical model within the library.

author of

LittleCMS

The

made a rst preview of the upcoming version 2.0 (an almost

complete rewrite) available recently.

Adapting to that version took only about a

good day of modications, even though some substantial changes were made to the
API. But even for this case only very little amounts of new code had to be written.
Overall, it is foreseeable that this type of library wrapping in the Python world
will become more and more ubiquitous, as the tools for it mature. But already at the
present time one does not have to fear the process. The time spent initially setting
up the environment will be easily saved over all projects phases and iterations. It
will be interesting to see
well.

Ctypes

evolve to be able to interface to C++ libraries as

Currently the developers of

Ctypes

and

Py++

(Thomas Heller and Roman

Yakovenko) are evaluating potential extensions.

References
[1]

Ocial Python Documentation: Extending and Embedding the Python Interpreter

, Python Software Foundation.

[2] T. Heller,  Python Ctypes Project, http://starship.python.net/crew/theller/

ctypes/, last accessed December 2008.
[3] M. Maria,  LittleCMS project, http://littlecms.com/, last accessed December
2008.
[4] D. M. Beazley and W. S. Fulton,  SWIG Project, http://www.swig.org/, last
accessed December 2008.
[5] D. Abrahams and R. W. Grosse-Kunstleve,  Building Hybrid Systems with
Boost.Python, http://www.boostpro.com/writing/bpl.html, March 2003, last
accessed December 2008.
[6] D. Abrahams,  Boost.Python Project, http://www.boost.org/libs/python/,
last accessed December 2008.
[7] S. Behnel, R. Bradshaw, and G. Ewing,  Cython Project, http://cython.org/,
last accessed December 2008.
[8] R.

Yakovenko,

 Py++

Project,

http://www.language-binding.net/

pyplusplus/pyplusplus.html, last accessed December 2008.

Automatic C Library Wrapping

 Ctypes from the Trenches

10

[9] G. K. Kloss,  Source Code: Automatic C Library Wrapping  Ctypes from the
Trenches,

The Python Papers Source Codes [in review]

, vol. n/a, p. n/a, 2009,

[Online available] http://ojs.pythonpapers.org/index.php/tppsc/issue/.

[10] T. Oliphant,  NumPy Project, http://numpy.scipy.org/, last accessed December 2008.
[11] F. Lundh,  Python Imaging Library (PIL) Project, http://www.pythonware.
com/products/pil/, last accessed December 2008.
[12] S. Purcell,  PyUnit Project, http://pyunit.sourceforge.net/, last accessed December 2008.
[13] E. Loper,  Epydoc Project, http://epydoc.sourceforge.net/, last accessed December 2008.