Chapter 15. Embedding the IronPython engine

Embedding the IronPython engine is one of the major reasons for wanting to use IronPython. It provides a ready-made scripting language engine for embedding into applications. You can use it to provide user scripting and plugins or integrate Python code into systems written in other languages. You could even use it to provide user scripting for Silverlight applications.

Embedding the IronPython engine means turning the world, as we have seen it so far, inside out. Instead of using .NET objects from inside IronPython, we host the language engine inside C# or VB.NET—and interact with Python objects from these languages. This means that we make objects available for the Python code to work with and then work with objects created from Python back on “the other side.”

Although we work specifically with IronPython, much of what we look at is relevant to the other DLR languages as well.

There are many different ways of embedding IronPython, corresponding to the myriad of use cases to which you might apply it. In this chapter we take a leisurely stroll through some of the more common hosting scenarios. Not only will this cover many of the straightforward things you might want to achieve, but it will equip you to experiment with more esoteric uses to which you might bend IronPython.