7. IAC protocol plugin implementation

This page provides a guide on how to contribute and develop an application plugin for the IAC protocol. The plugin implementation is fairly straightforward.

7.1. Steps

Suppose you have a favorite application and there isn’t an implementation of it for the IAC protocol. If the application supports plugin development, it’s highly likely that you can turn this into an application that the IAC protocol can use. Currently there is no guide for plugin interfaces that aren’t written in Python, but if you find an application like this, don’t hesitate to email me for help on how to integrate it.

Integrating your application is fairly straightforward. Here are the steps:

1. Experiment with your application’s plugin development interface directly first to get a feel for it’s requirements and how it works.
2. Read the IAC protocol specification section for details on how to structure the semantics of your commands.
3. Follow this page’s example for implementation details.
4. Clone the repository from the project’s GitHub page, add your application, and submit a pull request to be reviewed.
5. If your application has no obvious semantic or implementation errors, then it will be accepted!

The first step is to create your application’s python file in the app/ directory with a descriptive name. If your application contains several sub-applications, like an office suite, then create a sub-folder in the app/ directory. Then create an __init__.py file in the sub-folder so that the IAC protocol can recognize it as a package and add all of your sub-applications.

Follow through the example implementation in the next section for implementation details.

7.2. Example

The following example gives an implementation overview of the Gnumeric application from the IAC protocol version 0.1 as an example of how to structure your application. Notice first that gnumeric.py is in the app/ folder.

Finally, Gnumeric is registered in the interfaces.py file so that the IAC protocol can recognize it. See the interfaces module for more information. It is registered as gnumeric, which is it’s scope name.

At the beginning of the Gnumeric’s implementation in gnumeric.py, it contains some necessary imports, some comments, and other initialization data:

"""
Gnumeric interface for the IAC protocol

Requirements:
    - Install gnumeric
    - Enable the "Python plugin loader" by going to Tools > Plug-ins... -> Plugin List
      and selecting it from the checkbox list.
"""
from gi.repository import GOffice
from gi.repository import Gnm
import warnings


with warnings.catch_warnings():
    warnings.simplefilter("ignore")
    Gnm.init()

Notice that, besides the imports, the application begins by describing some important information on how to get the application to work. Gnumeric needs to have the Python plugin loader enabled from the Plug-ins menu or it won’t work.

It also contains some initialization functionality. In this case, it suppresses Gtk’s warnings, which can be pretty visually annoying and not particularly useful for this plugin. It also has the most important initialization function, Gnm.init(), which initializaes Gnumeric so that it can be used.

You can create multiple classes and even files, but in order for your plugin to function properly, all methods that you want to be called by the interface should be contained within a class called Interface. The Interface class contains a variables dictionary so that it can access declared variables. This dictionary is required if you want to be able to save and call variables. Here are some of Gnumeric’s definitions and use cases:

class Interface(object)

This contains the interface for the application and it’s methods. This class is a partial example of Gnumeric’s implementation of the interface.

Variables:variables – (required) A dictionary of variables that the protocol uses to access objects and their methods.

static new_document(number_of_sheets)

Example usage:

gnumeric -> doc = new_document(1)

Parameters:number_of_sheets (int) – The number of sheets to create in the document. Returns:A workbook object.

static get_sheet(workbook, sheet_index)

Example usage:

gnumeric -> sheet = doc.get_sheet(0)

Parameters:

• workbook (workbook) – An instance of the workbook object.
• sheet_index (int) – The index of the sheet to access.

Returns:

A sheet object.

static fetch_cell(sheet, cell_range)

Example usage:

gnumeric -> cell = sheet.fetch_cell(‘A1’)

Parameters:

• sheet (sheet) – An instance of the sheet object.
• cell_range (str) – The cell to be fetched.

Returns:

A cell object.

static set_text(cell, string)

Example usage:

gnumeric -> cell.set_text(“Hello, World!”)

Parameters:

• cell (cell) – An instance of the cell object.
• string (str) – A string to set the cell contents to.

Returns:

True on success, False otherwise.

static get_text(cell)

Example usage:

gnumeric -> cell.get_text()

If the cell text is set to “Hello, World” this would be returned.

Parameters:cell (cell) – An instance of the cell object. Returns:The cell text.

And here is the example code of the partial implementation of Gnumeric’s interface class:

class Interface(object):
    variables = {}

    @staticmethod
    def new_document(number_of_sheets):
        """new_document([number of sheets])"""
        return Gnm.Workbook.new_with_sheets(number_of_sheets)

    @staticmethod
    def get_sheet(workbook, sheet_index):
        """[workbook].get_sheet([sheet index])"""
        return workbook.sheet_by_index(sheet_index)

    @staticmethod
    def fetch_cell(sheet, cell_range):
        """[sheet].fetch_cell(['A1'])"""
        cell_range_calculator = CellRangeCalculator()
        column, row = cell_range_calculator.cell_range_to_index(cell_range)
        return sheet.cell_fetch(column - 1, row - 1)

    @staticmethod
    def set_text(cell, string):
        """[cell].set_text(['string'])"""
        if (string.startswith('"') and string.endswith('"')) or \
                (string.startswith("'") and string.endswith("'")):
            string = string[1:-1]

        cell.set_text(string)
        return True

    @staticmethod
    def get_text(cell):
        """[cell].get_text()"""
        return cell.value.get_as_string()