Python pywin32 module Visio automation

Question

I have a Visio template which has its own stencil(library of shapes). Imagine, I have stencil which has more shapes; therefore, I want to delete the stencil of the template Visio, and want to add mine. I searched this a lot on the internet but couldn't find a solution. I can simply add my shapes to template document stencil, however, I want to do this using Python since I want to automate things, and in every template I don't want to do this.

In office VBA page, I found this but couldn't implement to my script. (Adding a document object based on both template and stencil.)

Here is the link: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/office/vba/api/visio.documents.add

Public Sub AddDocument_Example() 
 
 Dim vsoDocument As Visio.Document 
 
 'Add a Document object based on the Basic Diagram template. 
 Set vsoDocument = Documents.Add("Basic Diagram.vst") 
 
 'Add a Document object based on a drawing (creates a copy of the drawing). 
 Set vsoDocument = Documents.Add("Myfile.vsd ") 
 
 'Add a Document object based on a stencil (creates a copy of the stencil). 
 Set vsoDocument = Documents.Add("Basic Shapes.vss") 
 
 'Add a Document object based on no template. 
 Set vsoDocument = Documents.Add("") 
 
End Sub

I don't know maybe deleting current stencil might be a problematic because template Visio has already shapes from that stencil.

I'm open to new ideas or solutions. If you help me, I would be very appreciated.

My current code:

import win32com.client

app = win32com.client.Dispatch("Visio.Application")
app.Visible = True

doc = app.Documents.Open("d:\\X.vsd") #Open template document 
custom_stencil = app.Documents.Add("d:\\custom_stencil.vssx") #Trying to add custom stencil

page = app.ActivePage

#Show the all items in stencil
for shape in doc.Masters:
    print(shape)

Answer 1

Each document has its own masters. When you just open a stencil document, it does not bring the masters from that stencil document into your template document, it just opens that stencil document (or, more precisely, a copy of that stencil, in your code). If you did something like this loop, probably you'd see the masters:

for shape in custom_stencil.Masters:
    print(shape)

Please note that python is not a common choice when doing Office (Visio) automation. You usually do that with VBA. This may be the reason you don't find that many samples around.

Here I posted an example of creating a shape using python a few years ago: Use .vss stencil file to generate shapes by python code (use .vdx?)