Taurus plugins

Taurus can be extended by third party modules in various ways. The TEP13 prescribes some generic rules in order to unify the plugins support by using entry point APIs.

The following subsections describe each entry point based pluggable interface currently supported by taurus, according to TEP13.

CLI subcommands

• Description: register subcommands for the taurus CLI command. See taurus.cli

• Group: taurus.cli.subcommands

• Expected API: click.Command

• Entry point name convention: None, the name is ignored. Suggestion: use the subcommand name

• Loading pattern: extension (loaded when invoking the taurus command)

• Enabling pattern: installation

• Examples: taurus self-registers all its subcommands (see setup.py)

Schemes

• Description: new schemes in taurus.core to support other sources of data.

• Group: taurus.core.schemes

• Expected API: python module implementing a Taurus scheme. It should at least provide a taurus.core.taurusfactory.TaurusFactory specialization. See more details in the Taurus Core Tutorial

• Entry point name convention: the name must match the module name. For example: h5file = h5file

• Loading pattern: Driver

• Enabling pattern: installation

• Examples: taurus_tangoarchiving registers itself as a scheme

Formatters

• Description: adding formatter objects for taurus widgets, as used by taurus.qt.qtgui.base.TaurusBaseComponent.displayValue()

• Group: taurus.qt.formatters

• Expected API: a formatter accepted by taurus.qt.qtgui.TaurusBaseComponent.setFormat()

• Entry point name convention: A short descriptive string of the formatter. It may be used by the UI when offering the user to select formatters.

• Loading pattern: installation

• Enabling pattern: Explicit (e.g. via a selection dialog when calling taurus.qt.qtgui.TaurusBaseWidget.onSetFormatter())

• Examples: taurus self-registers several formatters (see setup.py)

Model Chooser Selectors

• Description: Adding widgets to be used by taurus.qt.qtgui.panel.TaurusModelSelector for supporting models from other schemes

• Group: taurus.model_selector.items

• Expected API: taurus.qt.qtgui.panel.TaurusModelSelectorItem

• Entry point name convention: the name should be a short description of the scheme or type of models supported by this item (e.g. TangoArchiving = ...). It is used as a tab title in taurus.qt.qtgui.panel.TaurusModelSelector

• Loading pattern: Extension

• Enabling pattern: installation (but it may be changed in the future to a explicit or self-enabled pattern)

• Examples: taurus_tangoarchiving registers taurus_tangoarchiving.widget.tangoarchivingmodelchooser.TangoArchivingModelSelectorItem as a model selector item

Plot widget Alternatives

• Description: alternative implementations of TaurusPlot.

• Group: taurus.plot.alts

• Expected API: to be formally defined with an Abstract Base Class. For now, informally, the API is defined by what is used in taurus.cli.alt.plot_cmd(): at minimum, a QWidget that has a setModel() that accepts a sequence of attribute names.

• Entry point name convention: a short descriptive identifier of the implementation (e.g. "tpg", …). The name is used in the UI for user selection of the implementation.

• Loading pattern: Extension

• Enabling pattern: explicit

• Examples: taurus_pyqtgraph registers taurus_tauruspyqtgraph.TaurusPlot as a plot alternative

Trend widget Alternatives

• Description: alternative implementations of TaurusTrend

• Group: taurus.trend.alts

• Expected API:to be formally defined with an Abstract Base Class. For now, informally, the API is defined by what is used in taurus.cli.alt.trend_cmd(): at minimum, a QWidget that has a setModel() that accepts a sequence of attribute names.

• Entry point name convention: a short descriptive identifier of the implementation (e.g. "tpg", …). The name is used in the UI for user selection of the implementation.

• Loading pattern: Extension

• Enabling pattern: explicit

• Examples: taurus_pyqtgraph registers taurus_tauruspyqtgraph.TaurusTrend as a trend alternative

Image widget Alternatives

• Description: alternative implementations of TaurusImage

• Group: taurus.image.alts

• Expected API: to be formally defined with an Abstract Base Class. For now, informally, the API is defined by what is used in taurus.cli.alt.image_cmd(): at minimum, a QWidget that has a setModel() that accepts an attribute name. At this moment, the widget creator needs to accept the wintitle keyword argument (it may change when the API is formalized)

• Entry point name convention: a short descriptive identifier of the implementation (e.g. "guiqwt", "tpg", …). The name is used in the UI for user selection of the implementation.

• Loading pattern: Extension

• Enabling pattern: explicit

• Examples: taurus self-registers its taurus.qt.qtgui.extra_guiqwt.TaurusImageDialog as an image widget alternative (see setup.py)

Trend2D widget Alternatives

• Description: alternative implementations of TaurusTrend2D

• Group: taurus.trend2d.alts

• Expected API: to be formally defined with an Abstract Base Class. For now, informally, the API is defined by what is used in taurus.cli.alt.trend2d_cmd(): at minimum, a QWidget that has a setModel() that accepts an attribute name. At this moment, the widget creator needs to accept the following keyword arguments: stackMode, wintitle, buffersize. (it may change when the API is formalized)

• Entry point name convention: a short descriptive identifier of the implementation (e.g. "guiqwt", "tpg", …). The name is used in the UI for user selection of the implementation.

• Loading pattern: Extension

• Enabling pattern: explicit

• Examples: taurus self-registers its taurus.qt.qtgui.extra_guiqwt.TaurusTrend2DDialog as trend2d widget alternative (see setup.py)

Form Factories

• Description: factories for custom “taurus value” widgets to be used in taurus forms. See taurus.qt.qtgui.panel.TaurusForm.setItemFactories()

• Group: taurus.form.item_factories

• Expected API: a factory function that accepts a model name as its first argument and which returns either a taurus.qt.qtgui.panel.TaurusValue type object (or None)

• Entry point name convention:

• Loading pattern: extension

• Enabling pattern: installation, but allowing explicit (de)selection based on taurus.core.util.plugin.selectEntryPoints().

• Examples: sardana registers sardana.taurus.qt.qtgui.extra_pool.formitemfactory.pool_item_factory() to provide custom widgets for sardana elements in taurus forms.

qtgui submodules

Note

This entry point is for internal use only (to be used for backwards compatibility when “outsourcing” submodules).

• Description: adding submodules to taurus.qt.qtgui.

• Group: taurus.qt.qtgui

• Expected API: python module (typically exposing QWidget classes)

• Entry point name convention: the name must match the module name

• Loading pattern: Extension (for performance, we use a taurus.core.util.lazymodule.LazyModule to delay the actual import of the module until one of its members is actually used).

• Enabling pattern: installation

• Examples: taurus_pyqtgraph registers itself to be exported as taurus.qt.qtgui.tpg