Automatically creating Perspective Navigation

Ignition Early Access
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#1

Hi there,

Been having a lot of fun playing around with Ignition 8 and the new Perspective module!

I’ve been working on automatically creating all of the navigation based on the current folder structure setup in the project. If I add a new Folder or View, I want that to automatically be created in my NavTree and linked properly in the Page Configuration.

I have it working, but find myself wondering if there are some built in functions that can make it easier and more intuitive.

Currently, I’m using the python os library to determine which files and folders are present on the gateway under the perspective views folder and using that information I’m creating a item dict and writing that to a tag that is linked to via an expression binding on the NavTree.

I am then building a json string and writing it to the page-config json file to link up the navigation.

I have 2 questions:

  1. Is it possible to, using some undocumented function, get a list of all perspective views (including their path) in the current project? Akin to system.gui.getWindowNames() in Vision?
  2. Is it possible to programatically alter the Page Configuration without modifying the page-config/config.json stored on the filesystem?

Thanks for your time!

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#2

No to both questions - but we do have plans to add similar “reflective” operations to Perspective as there are in vision, ie system.perspective.getMountedViews (or something like that). Exactly what that looks like, we’re not sure yet.

Once that’s possible, you should be able to use a binding on a navigation component to construct your views - no hacking into the resource directory required.

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#3

Awesome, glad to hear you’re planning on adding those features.

I will use my current code and wait patiently for these features to be added :smiley:

Thank you for the reply!

#4

Any idea on when this will be added?

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#5

I want to 2nd this idea! any word on when the above mentioned feature set may be added?

#6

No timeline, but I did just do what I could to escalate the existing ticket.

#7

Ok, here’s my take on how to tackle this. Rather than add a scripting function, instead, I’d like to inject information about the current project into session props. I’m thinking an object at session.props.project that would be shaped like this:

{
  name: string,
  title: string,
  description: string,
  lastModified: date,
  lastModifiedBy: string,
  views: array< { path: string} >,
  pageConfigs: array< { url: string, primaryView: string } >
}

It’s a bit odd to have “views” be an array of objects with only one attribute in them, but I figure that way it’ll be more flexible in the future if we want to add more information in about each view.

Thoughts?

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[feature-781]Perspective: Check if Embedded View 'path' is valid?
#8

Would this poll, or it it static on Session Startup? Who gets listed under lastModifiedBy if I delete a View folder on the file system without going through the Designer? This is all read-only (system-level security), correct? I can’t write a new pageConfig entry on-the-fly?

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#9

I’d be fine with that, really any mechanism inside Ignition to get the list of views that exist within a project works for me.

I currently have a script that runs whenever I save a project that checks the file system to find any newly added / removed views in project and stores them in a tag.

Having it built in means one less custom script I need to manage!

#10

Would this poll, or it it static on Session Startup?

It would be updated on-demand as the project is changed.

Who gets listed under lastModifiedBy if I delete a View folder on the file system without going through the Designer?

“external”

This is all read-only (system-level security), correct?

Yes

I can’t write a new pageConfig entry on-the-fly?

No

#11

We ended up implementing this as a scripting call after all. The json shape I indicated above will be returned from session.getProjectInfo() and system.perspective.getProjectInfo() as of 8.1.4

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