pythonbashsubprocesslibreofficesoffice

Parameter "--outdir" is not recognised via pythons subprocess.call but does work in terminal

I would like to write a python script to automate the conversion of libreoffice ott templates to normal odt files. if I go to the terminal (bash shell) and I type:

soffice --headless --convert-to odt "/path/template.ott" --outdir '/targetpath/template.odt'

The output is as expected, an odt file in a new target location.

When I script it (like so:

oldfile
outdir = pipes.quote(/targetpath/template.odt)
subprocess.call(['soffice --headless --convert-to odt /path/template.ott --outdir /pathtarget/template.odt'])

the output gives me

[Errno 2] No such file or directory

When I try to make the call like this:

subprocess.call(["soffice", "--headless", "--convert-to", "odt", pipes.quote(oldpath),outdir])

The result is the helptext of soffice, with the the reason:

    LibreOffice 4.2.8.2 420m0(Build:2)

    Unknown option: --outdir /targetpath/template.odt
...
Solution

  • Why not try with os.system ?

    os.system('soffice --headless --convert-to odt "/path/template.ott" --outdir "/targetpath/template.odt"')