14.14.1.8 Return types

By default functions are assumed to return the C int type. Other return types can be specified by setting the restype attribute of the function object.

Here is a more advanced example, it uses the strchr function, which expects a string pointer and a char, and returns a pointer to a string:

>>> strchr = libc.strchr
>>> strchr("abcdef", ord("d")) # doctest: +SKIP
8059983
>>> strchr.restype = c_char_p # c_char_p is a pointer to a string
>>> strchr("abcdef", ord("d"))
'def'
>>> print strchr("abcdef", ord("x"))
None
>>>

If you want to avoid the ord("x") calls above, you can set the argtypes attribute, and the second argument will be converted from a single character Python string into a C char:

>>> strchr.restype = c_char_p
>>> strchr.argtypes = [c_char_p, c_char]
>>> strchr("abcdef", "d")
'def'
>>> strchr("abcdef", "def")
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
ArgumentError: argument 2: exceptions.TypeError: one character string expected
>>> print strchr("abcdef", "x")
None
>>> strchr("abcdef", "d")
'def'
>>>

You can also use a callable Python object (a function or a class for example) as the restype attribute, if the foreign function returns an integer. The callable will be called with the integer the C function returns, and the result of this call will be used as the result of your function call. This is useful to check for error return values and automatically raise an exception:

>>> GetModuleHandle = windll.kernel32.GetModuleHandleA # doctest: +WINDOWS
>>> def ValidHandle(value):
...     if value == 0:
...         raise WinError()
...     return value
...
>>>
>>> GetModuleHandle.restype = ValidHandle # doctest: +WINDOWS
>>> GetModuleHandle(None) # doctest: +WINDOWS
486539264
>>> GetModuleHandle("something silly") # doctest: +WINDOWS
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
  File "<stdin>", line 3, in ValidHandle
WindowsError: [Errno 126] The specified module could not be found.
>>>

WinError is a function which will call Windows FormatMessage() api to get the string representation of an error code, and returns an exception. WinError takes an optional error code parameter, if no one is used, it calls GetLastError() to retrieve it.

Please note that a much more powerful error checking mechanism is available through the errcheck attribute; see the reference manual for details.