Drag and drop onto Python script in Windows Explorer

I would like to drag and drop my data file onto a Python script and have it process the file and generate output. The Python script accepts the name of the data file as a command-line parameter, but Windows Explorer doesn’t allow the script to be a drop target.

Is there some kind of configuration that needs to be done somewhere for this work?

Answer

Sure. From a mindless technology article called “Make Python Scripts Droppable in Windows”, you can add a drop handler by adding a registry key:

Here’s a registry import file that you can use to do this. Copy the following into a .reg file and run it (Make sure that your .py extensions are mapped to Python.File).

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOTPython.FileshellexDropHandler]
@="{60254CA5-953B-11CF-8C96-00AA00B8708C}"

This makes Python scripts use the WSH drop handler, which is compatible with long filenames. To use the short filename handler, replace the GUID with 86C86720-42A0-1069-A2E8-08002B30309D.

A comment in that post indicates that one can enable dropping on “no console Python files (.pyw)” or “compiled Python files (.pyc)” by using the Python.NoConFile and Python.CompiledFile classes.