how to write python wrapper of a java library

Question

How can we write a python (with CPython) binding to a Java library so that the developers that want to use this java library can use it by writing only python code, not worrying about any Java code?

Solution 1

You could try this way:

• Use Jython instead of CPython to write Python code http://www.jython.org.
• Integrate Jython code with Java code through Apache Bean Scripting Framework http://commons.apache.org/bsf/

If you definitely need to use CPython, then Apache Trift could be interesting for you: http://thrift.apache.org/ So you could make additional scalable abstraction layer and integrate your Java code with different languages (not only Python)

If you need a really low-level interface you could look at JNI http://java.sun.com/docs/books/jni/ for investigation. But I think it will take a lot of time to integrate your code with CPython using JNI.

Solution 2

I've used JPype in a similar instance with decent results. The main task would be to write wrappers to translate your java api into a more pythonic api, since raw JPype usage is hardly any prettier than just writing java code.