Context names in the API?

[wayner]

There is a text file, I think it is called extenders.properties in the webserver folder, that contains names for all of your extenders that is linked to their MAC IDs.

The web client uses this to show a "friendly" name on the Sage web home page so that it shows "Kitchen" rather than something like 01fd2a364f8.

Is there a way to access these names via the API or do you have to read and parse the text file?

[Slugger]

I don't remember the details, but I thought there was something added to the api in 7.0 or 7.1 that replaced that text file with something in the api so that everyone could use the same aliases. I'd have a look at the webui source code to see if that change was made or if I'm just imagining stuff.

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by wayner

There is a text file, I think it is called extenders.properties in the webserver folder, that contains names for all of your extenders that is linked to their MAC IDs.

The web client uses this to show a "friendly" name on the Sage web home page so that it shows "Kitchen" rather than something like 01fd2a364f8.

Is there a way to access these names via the API or do you have to read and parse the text file?

Not in the sagetv apis (or the sagex apis), but there is in the Phoenix APIs.

There is a bunch of phoenix.client.* apis that deal with getting and setting ui context names.

While these names are originally in the extenders.properties, it was decided some time ago that perhaps it would be better to store them in the Sage.properties as a server property, so the phoenix apis primarily deal with getting and setting the extender name in the server properties. When stored in the Sage.properties, it means that anything can access the names, under the key, sagex/uicontexts/CONTEXTNAME

There is also a phoenix.client.LoadWebServerExtenderNames() api that will load the extender properties and return them as a map, so you can get the pretty name, if configured there, using the context name as the key.

Either way the phoenix.client.* apis provide access to both ways of getting the "pretty" names.

[wayner]

Thanks Stuckless - so how do the names initially get loaded into the properties file? I see in some of the code that it does read the extenders.properties file. So is the "gold" copy kept in this file and if you change it there it then gets updated in sage.properties?

What happens if someone changes the name through the web server - does the change get immediately propogated back into sage.properties or does that happen when Sage starts up the next time?

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by wayner

Thanks Stuckless - so how do the names initially get loaded into the properties file? I see in some of the code that it does read the extenders.properties file. So is the "gold" copy kept in this file and if you change it there it then gets updated in sage.properties?

What happens if someone changes the name through the web server - does the change get immediately propogated back into sage.properties or does that happen when Sage starts up the next time?

I'm not sure.... I never worked on the webserver stuff... but I thought that when webserver updated the extender.properties, it would add it to the sagex/uicontexts as well. There is nothing in the phoenix code to do that, but likely it should.

[wayner]

I am getting an error which I think is related to how I am trying to call the Phoenix apis.

This code is failing - the import line is ok so it can find the API but it doesn't like how I am calling it. What prefix do I use for the API class? I have tried client., phoenix.client., and ClientAPI. and none of those two work.

import phoenix.client.*
println phoenix.client.LoadWebServerExtenderNames()

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by wayner

I am getting an error which I think is related to how I am trying to call the Phoenix apis.

This code is failing - the import line is ok so it can find the API but it doesn't like how I am calling it. What prefix do I use for the API class? I have tried client., phoenix.client., and ClientAPI. and none of those two work.

import phoenix.client.*
println phoenix.client.LoadWebServerExtenderNames()

I don't think LoadWebServerExtenderNames() returns a string, I'm pretty sure it returns a HashMap of MAC addresses and Friendly names. I'm not sure what the expected behavior for println or a hashmap is (my guess would be whatever error you are seeing). You might try:
println phoenix.client.LoadWebServerExtenderNames().toString()
and see what happens.

[stuckless]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

I don't think LoadWebServerExtenderNames() returns a string, I'm pretty sure it returns a HashMap of MAC addresses and Friendly names. I'm not sure what the expected behavior for println or a hashmap is (my guess would be whatever error you are seeing). You might try:
println phoenix.client.LoadWebServerExtenderNames().toString()
and see what happens.

adding toString() is not required, since java implicitly calls toString() during any case in which you pass an object and it wants a string. So in this case the output would be the same if you used .toString() or not.

[wayner]

The issue was that static was required when calling the API, so the following code works:

import static phoenix.client.*
println phoenix.client.LoadWebServerExtenderNames()

I think this may be something unique to Groovy, although for the most part Groovy can execute Java code.

Thanks for your help folks.