> Hi
>
> I am new to Ptolemy. I am interested in using it in my product
> which is a desktop software development tool (written in Java) that
> needs to run simulations and display the results to the user. I do
> not need any of the Ptolemy GUI functionality. I am only interested
> in the Discrete Event domain.
>
> My questions are:
>
> 1. Can I use Ptolemy II by calling methods in the API that would
> create a model, populate it, run a simulation and extract the results?
> As a bonus for the advanced user I would like to save the model as an
> XML file that could be opened in Ptolemy II GUI tools (e.g. Vergil),
> but that is not a priority.
Yes. See ptolemy/actor/gui/MoMLSimpleApplication.java and
ptolemy/actor/gui/PtExecuteApplication.java, which both instantiate and run
a model.
PtExecuteApplication is graphical, MoMLSimpleApplication is not.
PtExecuteApplication uses configurations, MoMLSimpleApplication does
not.
Configurations are basically MoML files that describe how what menu
choices are available etc.
Getting the results is a little trickier.
If your model wrote the results to a file, you could read the contents
of the file.
I suppose you could also modify Ptolemy so that there was a way to read an
Object Token after wrapup that would read the results.
However, probably the best way would be to use the
ptolemy/actor/lib/Recorder.java actor records inputs for later
quering.
You can also use Tcl to run models, see $PTII/doc/coding/testing.htm
The Tcl command:
java::new ptolemy.actor.gui.MoMLSimpleApplication foo.xml
will invoke MoMLSimpleApplication on foo.xml
See ptolemy/domains/de/lib/test/Server.tcl for an example that creates
a DE model and uses the Recorder actor to get the results.
That test sources $PTII/util/testsuite/models.tcl and calls
the deModel Tcl proc to set up the basic model.
Instead of using Tcl, you could write similar code in java.
You would need to be careful that the Recorder actor was not garbage
collected after the model was run, and getting access to the Recorder
actor in a model that was created by parsing MoML could be tricky, you
could look it up by name.
> 2. Are there any examples of this type of integration?
>
> My preferred form of integration is to integrate to Ptolemy JARs. My next
> preference is to recompile the Ptolemy source code.
See above.
You could probably write just a little java code, using
MoMLSimpleApplication as a base and querying the results.
You could then use the other jar files unchanged.
ptolemy/ptsupport.jar includes the Manager and domain polymorphic
actors
ptolemy/domains/de/de.jar includes the DE domain.
The applets in $PTII/ptolemy/domains/de/demo/*/*.htm use these jar
files.
$PTII/lib/ptjacl.jar is where the Tcl interface is used.
Once you have your system working, you could also create your own
custom jar file by using tree shaking to create a jar file that
contains only the class files necessary to run the model.
ptII/util/testsuite/treeshake is a shell script that will do this for
you. treeshake is a hack, but it can be made to work.
The first argument is the location of the jar executable, which
can be found with:
[EMAIL PROTECTED] 79% which jar
/opt/local/j2sdk1.4.2_02/bin/jar
The second argument is the jar file to be created, below I use test.jar
The remaining arguments are the command to be executed, below we
invoke multirate.xml
[EMAIL PROTECTED] 80% $PTII/util/testsuite/treeshake /opt/local/j2sdk1.4.2_02/bin/jar
test.jar java -classpath $PTII ptolemy.actor.gui.MoMLSimpleApplication
ptolemy/domains/de/test/auto/multirate.xml
This produces test.jar, which is 664k in size.
To run the model:
java -classpath test.jar ptolemy.actor.gui.MoMLSimpleApplication
ptolemy/domains/de/test/auto/multirate.xml
In theory, you could use the Jode obfuscator to make the file smaller, though
because the .xml file refers to classes in ptolemy, this would not
work. Possibly using shallow code generation and then treeshaking
and obfuscation would work.
-Christopher
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