Documentation/CLI Support in CTK

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This page is a working draft and does not contain final information.

Command Line Interface (CLI) support in CTK will primarly focus on providing an API for working with existing CLI modules. Providing utiltities and tools for creating CLI modules from scratch is a desired addition but there are no concrete plans for this yet.


Getting the Code

The code is available in the CTK master:

https://github.com/commontk/CTK

Enable the following CMake options to be able to play with the code:

  • BUILD_TESTING (for creating CLI test modules)
  • CTK_APP_ctkCommandLineModuleExplorer (small program allowing you to test-drive CLI modules using the CTK CLI module API, enables all the options below)
  • CTK_LIB_CommandLineModules/Core (the CTK library providing the core CLI module API)
  • CTK_LIB_CommandLineModules/Frontend/QtGui (the CTK library providing GUI generation using the Qt widgets)
  • CTK_LIB_CommandLineModules/Backend/LocalProcess (the CTK library for executing local executable files as command line modules)

API Design

This is a graph with borders and nodes. Maybe there is an Imagemap used so the nodes may be linking to some Pages.

Overview of some central classes and their scope:

ctkCmdLineModuleDescription

C++ API for accessing the command line arguments meta-data defined in the XML description.

This class is read-only.

ctkCmdLineModuleReference

A handle to a command line module.

  • Get ctkCmdLineModuleDescription class
  • Convenient meta-data access (module location etc.)
  • Used to get actual ctkCmdLineModuleInstance instances from ctkCmdLineModuleManager

ctkCmdLineModuleInstance

Represents an invokable command line module and its current parameter values.

Multiple instances for the same ModuleReference may exist.

  • Set/Get individual parameter values or all at once
  • Reset to default parameters
  • Run/Abort
  • Status
  • Progress reporting
  • Get GUI representation (QObject*)
  • Get parameter value change notifications

ctkCmdLineModuleManager

Responsible for instantiating other ctkCmdLineModule* classes.

  • Register factory for customizing GUI generation
  • Register/Unregister modules
  • Get ctkCmdLineModuleReference objects
  • Create/List ModuleInstance objects

Customizability

Qt Widget related

  • Use parameters for the default XSLT file to customize widget class names for argument types
  • Use your own XSLT file for custom transformations of XML to UI
  • Use your own QUILoader to control instantiation of certain widget types

General

  • Use a custom factory to create your own GUI based on a ctkCmdLineModuleDescription instance.
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