The Plugin Tool Execution Framework¶
The Plugin Class¶
The Plugin Class is the basis for all Ayx Plugin Tools in the new Core SDK. The abstract Plugin class provides the required abstract methods that need to be implemented in order for a tool to interact with he Designer Application. These interactions are mediated by the Providers, which provide simplified interfaces for Designer functionality and drive the execution of the Ayx Plugin Tools. For more information on the execution flow, see the Plugin Lifecycle Documentation.
Registering the Plugin¶
Every plugin must be registered with the Core SDK after the new Ayx Plugin Tool class is defined. The Ayx Plugin Tool must implement the base Plugin class in order to for the Core SDK to accept the registered plugin. The registration process indicates to the Core SDK that the Plugin exists, what the name of the class is, and provides a means of driving the Ayx Plugin Tool’s execution.
The Initialization Method¶
The init method in the Ayx Plugin Tool class initializes relevant properties. It is also the access point for the BaseProvider object to all of the Plugin methods, so the provider is typically stored as a class variable in the init method. The init is also the point when anchors are set from the provider.
The on_input_connection_opened Method¶
The on_input_connection_opened
method is called when a connection is
established with a plugin’s input anchor. This method receives the
InputConnectionBase
object, which contains the metadata information
regarding the input connection. This includes what the fields of the
connection are, the name of the connection, and the max packet size.
This method should only deal with meta-information regarding the input
anchor and input connection (and setting any metadata on the output
anchors if it is known from the Input Connection’s metadata).
The on_record_packet Method¶
The on_record_packet
method is called for each input connection when
the number of records the connection has received reaches the
max_packet_size
defined for that connection. If None
is set for
max_packet_size
then all records will be accumulated before
on_record_packet
is called. This method takes in an
InputConnectionBase
which is the connection which has received it’s
maximum number of records. In this method you would call the
InputConnectionBase.read()
function, which would return the
RecordPacket with max_packet_size
number of records. The
RecordPacket
contains the metadata information and to/from dataframe
methods. The to_dataframe
method is used on Input Connections to
convert the records contained in the RecordPacket
object to a
Pandas DataFrame. The
from_dataframe
method is used to convert the processed data back to
records which are then pushed to the Output Anchor.
on_complete¶
The on_complete
method is called at the end of the runtime
execution. This typically does any cleanup required for the Ayx Plugin
Tool or if the plugin is an Input tool-type, this method would be used
to read in the data from the datasource and push it to the Output
Anchor, since an Input tool-type has no Input Anchors or connections and
therefore on_input_connection_opened
and on_record_packet
are
not called.
Localizing engine messages¶
We recommend using python’s
gettext module if
you need to localize engine messages (info, warning, error). Our
AyxSdkInput example tool
uses gettext for translating these messages. Alteryx’s currently
selected locale can be grabbed from the provider:
self.provider.environment.alteryx_locale
. This locale is grabbed
from the HelpLanguage
tag in UserSettings.xml
which is usually
located in
C:\Users\{USER}\AppData\Roaming\Alteryx\Engine\{DESIGNER_VERSION}
.
Switching locale in designer will update this tag to the currently
selected locale. The AyxSdkInput example is only translated in spanish
for the purposes of demonstrating this feature.