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portable_device_api

A wrapper around the Windows Portable Devices (WPD) API. The WPD API can be used to access Media Transfer Protocol (MTP) devices, like smartphones. It can also be used to access USB drives.

Background

Programming the Windows API in Python can be tricky. This package provides Python classes with type annotations that accept regular Python types. It also handles some details about data allocation and conversion, as well as workarounds for some issues.

The API provided by this package closely follows the WPD API, with very little higher-level functionality.

Example

The following example shows a list of connected devices (without error handling).

from portable_device_api import PortableDeviceManager

manager = PortableDeviceManager.create()

print(f"{'Description':<25}{'Friendly name':<25}{'Manufacturer':<25}")
print(f"{'-----------':<25}{'-------------':<25}{'------------':<25}")

for device_id in manager.get_devices():
    description   = manager.get_device_description(device_id)
    friendly_name = manager.get_device_friendly_name(device_id)
    manufacturer  = manager.get_device_manufacturer(device_id)

    print(f"{description!r:<25}{friendly_name:<25}{manufacturer:<25}")

Testing

Some unit tests require a device to access; it is recommended to use a USB drive.

  • Create a folder on the drive (e.g., portable_device_api_test)
  • Run tools/ls.py or the example above to determine the device description

To run the tests, set the environment variable PORTABLE_DEVICE_API_TEST_PATH to the device description and folder name, separated by a forward slash. For example, if your device is called MY_DRIVE, then set the environment variable to MY_DRIVE/portable_device_api_test.

Note that the device description may contain trailing spaces. They have to be included in the environment variable.

You can also run all tests that don't require a device by invoking pytest with -m "not device".

References