Sikuli interpreter shell within IDE, etc.?

The easiest way, to get this up and running, is using XML-RPC. This is possible with a few lines of code and has the option to run it over the net. The server acts as an always-open interpreter for Sikuli actions. (the basics: see faq 1331)

As with many things around Sikuli, the challenge is: how to handle images. On same machine, it is rather simple. But over the net?

Hmm...didn't think of XML-RPC, good suggestion.

But it probably won't feel like an interpreter shell that way, unless you build a front end web UI that mimics an interpreter.

Using the interpreter over XML-RPC will feel more like making a set of individual Sikuli API calls over XML-RPC. Technically, that's not much different from using interpreter locally, except that the UI feels different because there is no XML-RPC client that "feels" like an interpreter shell session.

As for the handle image problem, if you're calling over network, I would think you'd often already have the images already defined and saved to common repository (the XML-RPC server machine, or a common file share), otherwise, you'd build a mechanism to push the images from local machine to the remote XML-RPC server machine.

good answer ;-)

Since I like the idea of some how issuing Sikuli "commands", I will check the next weeks with the different XML-RPC solutions, how this may go from command line.

Actual on looking further, the solution is kind of available, just not integrated with the IDE.

The closest thing would be this article

https://answers.launchpad.net/sikuli/+question/141302

but rather than run sikuli scripts, we invoke Jython/Python Sikuli API commands via Jython interpreter session (that we manually start up).

So the initial idea of this thread is simply to incorporate within the IDE as separate "plugin" type feature, the launching of said Jython interpreter w/ the classpath and jythonpath all taken cared of along with auto importing the Sikuli library so the user doesn't have to issue the following command in the Jython interpreter shell manually:

from sikuli.Sikuli import *

be nice for that to be called already and user can just begin invoking the Jython/Python Sikuli APIs from the shell that's within the IDE.

An example of what I'm thinking of is something like the IDLE Python GUI Windowed version of the interpreter shell but incorporated within the Sikuli IDE as another view/tab.

And example of what one can do with it is like below what I've done for Jython shell manually:

Microsoft Windows XP [Version 5.1.2600]
(C) Copyright 1985-2001 Microsoft Corp.

C:\Scripts>cd c:\jython2.5.2

C:\jython2.5.2>cfgSikuli.bat

C:\jython2.5.2>set CLASSPATH=C:\jython2.5.2\sikuli-script.jar

C:\jython2.5.2>set JYTHONPATH=C:\jython2.5.2\Lib;c:\jython2.5.2\sikuli-script.ja
r\Lib

C:\jython2.5.2>bin\jython.bat
Jython 2.5.2 (Release_2_5_2:7206, Mar 2 2011, 23:12:06)
[Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM (Sun Microsystems Inc.)] on java1.6.0_27
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> from sikuli.Sikuli import *
[info] Sikuli vision engine loaded.
[info] Windows utilities loaded.
[info] VDictProxy loaded.
>>> exists(r'C:\Scripts\bin\img\aiWelcome.png')
Match[396,542 658x127] score=0.92, target=center
>>> exists(r'C:\Scripts\bin\img\aiWelcome.png')
>>> exists(r'C:\Scripts\bin\img\aiWelcome.png',1)
>>> exists(r'C:\Scripts\bin\img\aiWelcome.png',1)
Match[396,542 658x127] score=0.92, target=center
>>>

this is already available for usage on command line:

java -jar path-to-sikuli-script.jar -i

which starts an interactive Jython session with Sikuli already imported (Jython 2.5.2 with rc3).

Thanks RaiMan, didn't know that. But that would still be nice to integrate with IDE as well for more advanced users. But the current option will do for now.

I was just wondering how to do this, I had to add the following to the path:
c:\bin\sikuli-ide\libs;%programfiles%\java\jre6\bin

then
java -jar ...\sikuli-script.jar -i
worked like a charm.

I wrapped it in a .bat file, and the following gives nice tab completion:
(from http://www.jython.org/docs/library/rlcompleter.html)

import readline
import rlcompleter

readline.parse_and_bind(“tab: complete”)

--- and the following gives nice tab completion
good finding.

But be careful:
It lists all functions from Sikuli's Python API AND all public functions from the Sikuli's Java API, that cannot all be used on the Python level (you do not see that with rlcompleter).