Python UNO and Threads

Question

I am working with Python UNO using the "internal" (Libreoffice is the host process) version where the Python interpreter lives within Libreoffice/Openoffice. I would like to make the code nonblocking...that is once the code gets called as a macro, it starts a second thread and returns the main thread back to Office so that it does not block the UI while it continues to run a very lengthy process (10-20 minutes execution time).

When I tried exactly this, LibreOffice freezes forever. I've searched just about everywhere but other than an odd reference to importing scipy in a second thread and then blocking while waiting on that thread (myrhread.join()), there seems to be nowhere that this is done.

Alternatively, is it possible to create a new ServiceManager so that I could invoke a second process and then link back to the ServiceManager so that I can return back to LibreOffice in the normal way without locking it up with a "ghost thread"?

Answer 1

After a lot of digging, I found the answer here:

LibreOfficeForum Threading Example

For simple long-running tasks where it would otherwise block the UI thread, this works very well. The relevant code is as follows:

from threading import Thread
from time import sleep
import uno

t = None

def test_worker(doc):

    # Wait 30 seconds for demonstration purposes
    sleep(30)

    # Get the 1st sheet in the document and insert text into cell A1
    doc.Sheets.getByIndex(0).getCellByPosition(0,0).String = "I'm back"

def delayedRun(*args):
    global t
    doc = XSCRIPTCONTEXT.getDocument()
    t = Thread(target = test_worker, args = (doc,))
    t.start()

g_exportedScript = delayedRun,