import win32com.client

googleEarth = win32com.client.Dispatch("GoogleEarth.ApplicationGE")
while not googleEarth.IsInitialized():
print "waiting for Google Earth to initialize"

#googleEarth.OpenKmlFile("test.kml")
googleEarth.SetCameraParams( 41.487942634608913, -81.686570904088171, 0.0, 1, 150.00011938469936, 70.000000000947935, -127.30257903894255, 100)

import win32com.client
import time

speed = 0.1
close_enough = 45 # How close (in degrees) we get to deisred point
# before setting camera to next point in path

googleEarth = win32com.client.Dispatch("GoogleEarth.ApplicationGE")
while not googleEarth.IsInitialized():
print "waiting for Google Earth to initialize"

# set up an array that describes the path of our camera around the world
# Lat, Long, Alt, AltMode, Range, Tilt, Azim, Speed
cameraPath = [ [ 0, 0, 0, 1, 8000000, 0, 0, speed ],
[ 0, 45, 0, 1, 8000000, 0, 0, speed ],
[ 0, 90, 0, 1, 8000000, 0, 0, speed ],
[ 0, 135, 0, 1, 8000000, 0, 0, speed ],
[ 0, 180, 0, 1, 8000000, 0, 0, speed ],
[ 0, -135, 0, 1, 8000000, 0, 0, speed ],
[ 0, -90, 0, 1, 8000000, 0, 0, speed ],
[ 0, -45, 0, 1, 8000000, 0, 0, speed ]]

for path in cameraPath :
result = googleEarth.SetCameraParams(path[0],path[1],path[2],path[3],
path[4],path[5],path[6],path[7])
time.sleep(1)
camera = googleEarth.GetCamera(0)
while (( camera.FocusPointLongitude > (path[1] + close_enough ))
or (camera.FocusPointLongitude < path[1] - close_enough)) :
camera = googleEarth.GetCamera(0)
print camera.FocusPointLongitude
time.sleep(1)

Greetings. I am a newbie to this COM stuff and have only been looking at this for a couple days. Obviously I have a lot of questions so I was hoping you guys could help me get started or point me in the correct direction. To get to the point, I'm trying to make a MFC C++ ( i have to use c++ ) project that has two controls on it : zoom in and zoom out. I basically want to zoom-in and zoom-out on Google Maps using my controls on my MFC App. Now that you know the simple scope of my project, here are my questions and since everyone here seems to know what they are doing besides me, I figured this is the best place to ask.

What do I do with the earth.idl file and how do I use it?

After looking at pseabury's C#.Net wrapper earlier in this thread at: http://tropicalwatch.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/GoogleEarthCOMWrapper/ I wanted to write my own. I also don't know what he meant by add a reference to the assembly ( im guessing he meant add a reference to the executable? ).

I don't know how to interface with the .idl. I've tried two ways.

First I tried to follow pseabury's way but for some reason my compiler ( VS 2005 ) doesn't like when I say "using EARTHLib;" or "using namespace EARTHLib;". These generate these two errors respectively:

"Error 1 error C2873: 'EARTHLib' : symbol cannot be used in a using-declaration"

and

"Error 1 error C2871: 'EARTHLib' : a namespace with this name does not exist"

Why?

I thought the namespace was defined in the .idl so why isn't it working?

Since that didn't work, I tried to make a .h file GoogleEarthAPI.h and start defining all the functions and classes which I derive publically from COleDispatchDriver. I didn't think that was the right way though because I still don't know how I'm going to interface with the .idl and I noticed the UUID's in the .idl file. The way I planned to interface with the .idl was to do something like this:

Code:

void IApplicationGE::SetRenderWindowSize(long width, long height)
{
	InvokeHelper(7, DISPATCH_METHOD, VT_EMPTY, NULL, NULL);
}

to interface with this in the earth.idl file

Code:

[id(7), helpstring("method SetRenderWindowSize")] HRESULT SetRenderWindowSize(long width, long height);

I didn't want to go too far down this path without asking first what to do first. That is code that i've seen from people interfacing with an .idl for an .ocx . InvokeHelper is a public function in COleDispatchDriver. That could be completely the wrong way -- i have no clue

So what do I need to get this to work? I have the .idl file added to the project. And I know I need a .cpp file to define how all the functions work. But how and where do I use the namespace EARTHLib and do I still need a .h file or does the .idl file count for all the declarations?

The C#.Net version confused me and I can't find a C++ wrapper. For those that can't answer this directly, if you know of any good reads on COM on the web, please feel free to PM me with a link or respond so that I might be able to solve my own problem. Thanks in advance guys and hopefully someone can point me in the right direction.