Ideal way to display objects on a screen

Ignition
1

Let’s say I have a large object on a components.custom property and want to display it, how would some of you do this? When I bind the object to a Label it’s quite hard to read.

I’d like to see the object in runtime in this format:
image

Any ideas or suggestions?

3

Markdown component paired with the jsonFormat expression would be ideal, although I confess I’m not positive the expression will directly work with perspective objects at present. If that fails, you could do the same thing, but with Python’s builtin pprint module instead; the script transform would just be:

import pprint
return pprint.pformat(value)
4

This is returning null for me in 8.1.1.

5

Oh, right. pprint automatically dumps to stdout. You want pprint.pformat:
https://docs.python.org/2.7/library/pprint.html#pprint.pformat

6

Doens’t return null :slight_smile: but returns a single line string :frowning:
Using jsonFormat() expression seems to give me the format I want in the markdown.source viewer but onscreen it looks like a single line string.

I tried using json.dumps but that seems to create another set of issues in the Transform but works fine in the Script Console. :thinking:

7

"```\n" + jsonFormat({value}) + "\n```" in an expression transform works pretty well, although it’s reading the nested props as QVs…
image

2 Likes
8

That's odd but it beats anything else thus far. Thanks @PGriffith

9

For something you can use in a script transform (though you should probably put this into a project scoped script). Also, make sure you only attempt to use it from Perspective contexts:

	from com.inductiveautomation.ignition.common import TypeUtilities
	from com.inductiveautomation.perspective.common import PerspectiveModule
	
	gson = PerspectiveModule.createPerspectiveCompatibleGson()
	json = TypeUtilities.pyToGson(value, gson)
	
	return "```\n{}\n```".format(gson.toJson(json))

image

The triple backtick surrounds are to tell the Markdown component that it’s preformatted text, and thus to preserve line breaks and render with a monospaced font - just like code blocks on the forum.

1 Like
10

I put it in the project library scripts and it works from the script console but when I call it from the markdown.source transform, I get ImportError: No module named perspective

11

A project library called format, defined as:

from com.inductiveautomation.ignition.common import TypeUtilities
from com.inductiveautomation.perspective.common import PerspectiveModule

gson = PerspectiveModule.createPerspectiveCompatibleGson()

def json(value):
	json = TypeUtilities.pyToGson(value, gson)
	return "```\n{}\n```".format(gson.toJson(json))

Is working for me, in both the script console and a design session:

image
image930×652 49 KB

1 Like
12

Mimicked your setup but same import error… I’ll have to circle back around to this tomorrow and try again.

13

Wondering if I'm experiencing an issue with 8.1.1-STABLE that is not present in the version you're running?

Can't seem to get around the import error from this line:

Error reported:
ImportError: No module named perspective

14

Where are you running your code?

15

markdown.props.source

16

I am getting the same error about not being able to import perspective module in the property binding transform of the mark down component source.

17

I assume this only worked for @PGriffith because he was running Ignition in the IDE…

1 Like
18

Another solution, which involved more scripting, is to use the Tree component to display your JSON/Document data.

19

I went with the expression transform approach. Thanks.

20

Here is a way to do it without using an expression. @PGriffith can comment if there is anything bad here, but avoids the use of the other library that can’t be imported.

def toDict(perspective_object):
	"""Formats a perspective object as Dict
	
	Adapted from http://forum.inductiveautomation.com/t/ideal-way-to-display-objects-on-a-screen/41575

	Args:
		perspective_object: A perspective property object
	"""
	from com.inductiveautomation.ignition.common import TypeUtilities
	
	# Convert the Perspective property object to Gson and back to a Py Object
	return TypeUtilities.gsonToPy(TypeUtilities.pyToGson(perspective_object))
	
	
def toMarkdown(perspective_object, indent=3):
		"""Formats a perspective object as Markdown
	
		Args:
			perspective_object: A perspective property object
		"""
		from json import dumps
		json_string = dumps(toDict(perspective_object), indent=indent)
		return "```\n{}\n```".format(json_string)
4 Likes