TouchDesigner | Reusable Code Segmentation with Python

Thinking about how to approach re-usability isn’t a new topic here, in fact there’s been plenty of discussion about how to re-use components saved as tox files, how to build out modular pieces, and how to think about using Extensions for building components you want to re-use with special functions.

That’s wonderful and exciting, but for any of us that have built deployed projects have quickly started to think about how to build a standard project that any given installation is just a variation of… a flavor, if you will, of a standard project build. Much of that customization can be handled by a proper configuration process, but there are some outliers in every project… that special method that breaks our beautiful project paradigm with some feature that’s only useful for a single client or application.

What if we could separate our functions into multiple classes – those that are universal to every project we build, and another that’s specific to just the single job we’re working on? Could that help us find a way to preserve a canonical framework with beautiful abstractions while also making space for developing the one-off solutions? What if we needed a solution to handle the above in conjunction with sending messages over a network?  Finally, what if we paired this with some thoughts about how we handle switch-case statements in Python? Could we find a way to help solve this problem more elegantly so we could work smarter, not harder?

Well, that’s exactly what we’re going to take a look at here.

First a little disclaimer, this approach might not be right for everyone, and there’s a strong assumption here that you’ve got some solid Python under your belt before you tackle this process / working style. If you need to tool up a little bit before you dig in, that’s okay. Take a look at the Python posts to help get situated then come back to really dig in.

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Getting Set-up

In order to see this approach really sing we need to do a few things to get set-up. We’ll need a few operators in place to see how this works, so before we dig into the python let’s get our network in order.

First let’s create a new base:

Next, inside of our new base let’s set up a typical AB Deck of TOPs with a constant CHOP to swap between them:

Above we have two moviefilein TOPS connected to a switch TOP that’s terminated in a null TOP. We also have a constant CHOP terminated in a null whose chan1 value is exported to the index parameter of our switch TOP.

Let’s also use the new Layout TOP in another TOP chain:

Here we have a single layout TOP that’s set-up with an export table. If you’ve never used DAT Exports before you might quickly check out the article on the wiki to see how that works. The dime tour of that ideal is that we use a table DAT to export vals to another operator. This is a powerful approach for setting parameters, and certainly worth knowing more about / exploring.

Whew. Okay, now it’s time to set up our extensions. Let’s start by creating a textDAT called messageParserEXT, generalEXT, and one called jobEXT.

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The Message Parser

A quick note about our parser. The idea here is that a control machine is going to pass along a message to a set of other machines also running on the network. We’re omitting the process of sending and receiving a JSON blob over UPD, but that would be the idea. The control machine passes a JSON message over the network to render nodes who in turn need to decode the message and perform some action. We want a generalized approach to sending those blobs, and we want both the values and the control messages to be embedded in that JSON blob. In our very simple example our JSON blob has only two keys, messagekind and vals:

message = {
        'messagekind' : 'some_method_name',
        'vals' : 'some_value'
}

In this example, I want the messagekind key to be the same as a method name in our General or Specific classes.

Pero, like why?!

Before we get too far ahead of ourselves, let’s first copy and past the code below into our messageParserEXT text DAT, add our General and Specific Classes, and finish setting up our Extensions.

The General Code Bits

In our generalEXT we’re going to create a General class. This works hand in hand with our parser. The parser is going to be our helper class to handle how we pass around commands. The General class is going to handle anything that we need to have persist between projects. The examples here are not representative of the kind of code you’d have your project, instead they’re just here to help us see what’s happening in this approach.

The Specific Code Bits

Here in our Specific class we have the operations that are specific to this single job – or maybe they’re experimental features that we’re not ready to roll into our General class just yet, regardless, these are methods that don’t yet have a place in our canonical code base. For now let’s copy this code block into our jobEXT text DAT.

At this point we’re just about ready to pull apart what on earth is happening. First let’s make sure our extension is correctly set-up. Let’s go back up a level and configure our base component to have the correct path to our newly created extension:

 

Wait wait wait… that’s only one extension? What gives? Part of what we’re seeing here is inheritance. Our Specific class inherits from our General class, which inherits form our MessageParser. If you’re scratching your head, consider that a null TOP is also a TOP is also an OP. In the same way we’re taking advantage of Python’s Object oriented nature so we can treat a Specific class as a special kind of General operation that’s related to sending messages between our objects. All of his leads me to believe that we should really talk about object oriented programming… but that’s for another post.

Alright… ALMOST THERE! Finally, let’s head back inside of our base and create three buttons. Lets also create a panel execute for each button:

Our first panel execute DAT needs to be set up to watch the state panel value, and to run on Value Change:

Inside of our panel execute DAT our code looks like:

# me - this DAT
# panelValue - the PanelValue object that changed# # Make sure the corresponding toggle is enabled in the Panel Execute DAT.
def onOffToOn(panelValue):
    return
def whileOn(panelValue):
    return
def onOnToOff(panelValue):
    return
def whileOff(panelValue):
    return
def onValueChange(panelValue):
    message = {
        'messagekind' : 'Change_switch',
        'vals' : panelValue } 
    parent().Process_message(message)
    return

If we make our button viewer active, and click out button we should see our constant1 CHOP update, and our switch TOP change:

AHHHHHHHHH!

WHAT JUST HAPPENED?!

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The Black Magic

The secret here is that our messagekind key in our panel execute DAT matches an existing method name in our General class. Our ProcessMessage() method accepts a dictionary then extracts the key for messagekind. Next it checks to see if that string matches an existing method in either our General or Specific classes. If it matches, it then calls that method, and passes along the same JSON message blob (which happens to contain our vals) to the correct method for execution.

In this example the messagekind key was Change_switch(). The parser recognized that Change_switch was a valid method for our parent() object, and then called that method and passed along the message JSON blob. If we take a look at the Change_switch() method we can see that it extracts the vals key from the JSON blob, then changes the constant CHOP’s value0 parameter to match the incoming val.

This kind of approach let’s you separate out your experimental or job specific methods from your tried and true methods making it easier in the long run to move from job to job without having to crawl through your extensions to see what can be tossed or what needs to be kept. What’s better still is that this imposes minimal restrictions on how we work – I don’t need to call a separate extension, or create complex branching if-else trees to get the results I want – you’ll also see that in the MessageParser we have a system for managing elegant failure with our simple if hasattr() check – this step ensure that we log that something went wrong, but don’t just throw an error. You’d probably want to also print the key for the method that wasn’t successfully called, but that’s up to you in terms of how you want to approach this challenge.

Next see if you can successfully format a message to call the Image_order() method with another panel execute.

What happens if you call a method that doesn’t exist? Don’t forget to check your text port for this one.

If you’re really getting stuck you might check the link to the repo below so you can see exactly how I’ve set this process up.

If you got this far, here are some other questions to ponder:

• How would you  use this in production?
• What problems does this solve for you… does it solve any problems?
• Are there other places you could apply this same idea in your projects?

At the end of the day this kind of methodology is really looking to help us stop writing the same code bits and bobs, and instead to figure out how to build soft modules for our code so we can work smarter not harder.

With any luck this helps you do just that.

Happy Programming.

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Take a look at the sample Repo for this example on Github:
touchdesigner-reusable-code-segmentation-python