Export / visualize

[fkgl]

Hi,
Please what is the equivalent of these command lines in a python class (main.py)

1. textx visualize file.tx file.ent # my graphviz fonctionne but this is not the case for this command line.
2. textx generate hello.tx --target dot.
3. textx generate example.hello --grammar hello.tx --target dot

[igordejanovic]

If I understand the question correctly you are trying to achieve the same effect from Python code what can be done through textx generate command?

textx visualize is an old command which has been superseded by textx generate as visualization is nothing more but generating output in dot, plantUML or some other graph language.

textx generate is implemented here. You can see that it calls registered generator function here. Generators are registered using registration and discovery API.

textX has several built-in generators which you can see with textx list-generators. To call them see this part of the doc.

For example, to visualize .tx files:

from textx import metamodel_for_file
from textx import generator_for_language_target

# Get the metamodel which knows how to parse the given file.
mm = metamodel_for_file('hello.tx')
# Parse the given file with the provided metamodel
model = mm.model_from_file('hello.tx')
# Get the generator from tx file (textx language) to dot
# Generator function is defined here: https://github.com/textX/textX/blob/master/textx/generators.py#L54
generator = generator_for_language_target('textx', 'dot')
# Call the generator
generator(mm, model, '.', overwrite=True, debug=False)

[fkgl]

Hi @igordejanovic
Thank you for your reply.
I tried the example above and it works. What about this command in Python code:
To convert to png run "dot -Tpng -O hello.dot"
Becouse I tried the following lines of code:

generator = generator_for_language_target('textx', 'png')
generator(mm, model, '.', overwrite=True, debug=False)

textx.exceptions.TextXRegistrationError: b'No generators registered for language "textx" and target "png".'

[igordejanovic]

dot is an external command (not part of textX). It is part of GraphViz. You can lookup online how to install GraphViz and how to call external commands from Python.

[fkgl]

Thank you for your reply.
Now it's OK