Accessing complex types via control server #248
Description
This is from a question asked by Tom Willemsen.
If a device is defined like this:
class MyDevice(StateMachineDevice):
def initialize_data(self):
self.channels = {1 : Channel(), 2 : Channel(), 3 : Channel()}
...Where Channel is defined like this:
class Channel(object):
def __init__(self):
self.waveform_type = 0
self.step_time = 0
...Would it be possible to access via control server using this sort of syntax (or similar):
$ lewis-control device channels[1].waveform_type 1
For now I suggested creating set_channel_param(self, index, param, value) and get_channel_param(self, index, param) methods on the MyDevice object. But it would be nicer if we could avoid the need for creating such boilerplate methods.
There are two difficulties with implementing something like this:
- Syntax / shell interaction (
[1]might mean something special in some shells) - Trying to json-rpc
Channelobjects throws a "not serializable" exception
The method workaround works fine, so this issue is mainly to see if we can come up with ideas on how to improve this.