PythonC reading string from PyDict

Hi,

I'm using python to set up a rendering engine. The settings are stored in the script file as dictionary objects.

eg:

Code:

RenderInfo = {};
RenderInfo['Title']  					= "Simple Python Board"; #window Title
RenderInfo['ScreenWidth']                      =  640;
....
....

I'm trying to read this in C++ like this

Code:

PyObject *renderInfo,*renderStats;
renderInfo = PyDict_GetItemString(pDict,"RenderInfo");
renderStats = PyDict_GetItemString(renderInfo,"Title");
char* title = PyBytes_AsString(renderStats);
//Also Tried  PyBytesArray_AsString
printf("%s\n",title);  // Prints NULL
renderStats = PyDict_GetItemString(renderInfo,"ScreenWidth");
int sw = PyLong_AsLong(renderStats);
printf("%d\n",sw); // prints 640

All other types work, but the string's fail and return NULL. This is the first time I'm using the PyBytes_AsString function since it replaced PyString_AsString in version 3.1.

Does Anyone know why this is not working ?
Thanks!

Well, still no luck. I've added a temporary hack to fix this issue but I still can't read a string. Any Ideas ?

I have a lame idea and given that I just woke from a nap, take it for what it is worth. First, if you have ever used Python to do XML-RPC based calls passing objects as anything more than very simple data types, you know that you have to 'stringify' the object. This same method could be used to stringify your dictionary which C++ could then parse. I originally wrote a Python-based XML-RPC server, then wrote a C++ client to interact with it and this is what I wound up doing (writing C++ to parse the stringified objects that were being returned). There has GOT to be a better method but this does work....