How to use Application.DefaultWebOptions in the xlwings API way

The Application.DefaultWebOptions property in Excel’s object model provides access to a DefaultWebOptions object, which contains global settings for how Excel handles web-related features, such as saving workbooks as web pages or interacting with web queries. Through xlwings, you can access and modify these settings to control the default behavior for web publishing, encoding, and other web-specific options. This is particularly useful when automating the generation of web content from Excel data or ensuring consistency in web output formats.

Functionality:
The DefaultWebOptions object allows you to set properties that affect web-related operations. Key properties include:

• Encoding: Specifies the character encoding for web pages (e.g., utf-8, gb2312).
• PixelsPerInch: Controls the screen resolution for images in web pages.
• OrganizeInFolder: Determines whether supporting files are saved in a separate folder when saving as a web page.
• TargetBrowser: Sets the target browser version for compatibility.
• DownloadComponents: Specifies whether to download Office Web Components.

Syntax in xlwings:
In xlwings, you access DefaultWebOptions via the Application object. Since xlwings uses the underlying Excel object model through COM, the syntax mirrors VBA but is adapted for Python. The general format is:

app = xw.apps.active # Get the active Excel application
web_options = app.api.DefaultWebOptions

Once you have the web_options object, you can get or set its properties. For example, to set the encoding:

web_options.Encoding = "utf-8"

Note that DefaultWebOptions is a property, not a method, so it doesn’t take parameters directly. However, its properties may have specific values. For instance, TargetBrowser can be set using constants like xlBrowserV4 (for older browsers) or xlBrowserIE6 (for Internet Explorer 6). In xlwings, you can use the integer equivalents or import constants from win32com.client.constants if available.

Example Usage:
Here is a code example that demonstrates how to configure DefaultWebOptions using xlwings to prepare a workbook for web publishing. This script sets various properties and then saves the active workbook as a web page with the specified settings.

import xlwings as xw

# Connect to the active Excel application
app = xw.apps.active

# Access the DefaultWebOptions object
web_options = app.api.DefaultWebOptions

# Configure web properties
web_options.Encoding = "utf-8" # Set character encoding to UTF-8
web_options.PixelsPerInch = 96 # Set screen resolution for images
web_options.OrganizeInFolder = True # Save supporting files in a separate folder
web_options.TargetBrowser = 3 # Use constant for Internet Explorer 6 (value 3)
web_options.DownloadComponents = False # Disable downloading Office Web Components

# Save the active workbook as a web page with these settings
workbook = app.books.active
workbook.api.SaveAs(Filename="C:\\Output\\webpage.html", FileFormat=44) # FileFormat 44 is for web page