Controlling Paraview GUI from Python IDLE

Question

I am trying to control Paraview interactively using IDLE. This would involve sending commands from IDLE and seeing the changes occur in Paraview. I would rather not use the in-Paraview python shell.

So far, I have succeeded in importing the Paraview modules (simple, servermanager…etc) from IDLE. However the commands sent do not reflect in Paraview. For instance:

>>> from paraview.simple import *
>>> cone = Cone()
>>> Show()
>>> Render()

does indeed create a cone. However the cone is output to a new, independent OpenGL window, and not the Paraview GUI.

Is it possible to control Paraview interactively using IDLE? If so how to accomplish this? Thanks

Answer 1

You need to run paraview in multiclient/server mode. In a terminal run pvserver.

./bin/pvserver --multi-clients

In another terminal, run paraview and connect to your server

./bin/paraview
File->Connect
AddServer -> Choose a name -> Configure -> Save
Connect

In a third terminal, run pvpython (or your own configured python)

./bin/pvpython
>> from paraview.simple import *
>> Connect("localhost")
>> Cone()
>> Show()

Answer 2

I built paraview against my system python so that I could use ipython and other packages. I just had to set my PYTHONPATH to point to the paraview python site packages and the LD_LIBRARY_PATH to point to the paraview lib directory.

export PYTHONPATH=/path/to/paraview/install/lib/python2.7/site-packages
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/path/to/paraview/install/lib

$ ipython 
Python 2.7.15rc1 (default, Nov 12 2018, 14:31:15) 
Type "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.

IPython 5.5.0 -- An enhanced Interactive Python.
?         -> Introduction and overview of IPython's features.
%quickref -> Quick reference.
help      -> Python's own help system.
object?   -> Details about 'object', use 'object??' for extra details.

In [1]: from paraview.simple import *

In [2]: Connect("localhost")
Out[2]: Connection (cs://localhost:11111) [2]

In [3]: Cone()
Out[3]: <paraview.servermanager.Cone at 0x7f30716cde10>

In [4]: Show()
Out[4]: <paraview.servermanager.GeometryRepresentation at 0x7f307167b210>

In [5]: GetSources()
Out[5]: {('Cone1', '8803'): <paraview.servermanager.Cone at 0x7f30716cde10>}

In [6]: GetActiveSource()
Out[6]: <paraview.servermanager.Cone at 0x7f30716cde10>

Screen shot of the rendered cone from the ipython paraview client

My paraview version was built from master on Ubuntu 18.04.

The only issue I had was a missing __init__.py file in the python site-packages/paraview/modules directory.

In [1]: from paraview.simple import *
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
ImportError                               Traceback (most recent call last)
<ipython-input-1-cc11d49fb28b> in <module>()
----> 1 from paraview.simple import *

/home/dustin/repos/paraview_builds/master/install/lib/python2.7/site-packages/paraview/simple.py in <module>()
     39 
     40 import paraview
---> 41 from paraview import servermanager
     42 import paraview._backwardscompatibilityhelper
     43 

/home/dustin/repos/paraview_builds/master/install/lib/python2.7/site-packages/paraview/servermanager.py in <module>()
     54 from paraview import _backwardscompatibilityhelper as _bc
     55 
---> 56 from paraview.modules.vtkPVServerImplementationCore import *
     57 from paraview.modules.vtkPVClientServerCoreCore import *
     58 from paraview.modules.vtkPVServerManagerCore import *

ImportError: No module named modules.vtkPVServerImplementationCore

I got around this by just creating an __init__.py file in the paraview/modules directory:

touch /path/to/paraview/install/lib/python2.7/site-packages/paraview/modules/__init__.py