Scripting

Gaia Sky offers the possibility to run Python scripts in the same JVM using Jython.

You can find some example scripts in the scripts folder of the project.

Hint

Add your own scripts to the folder $HOME/.gaiasky/scripts so that Gaia Sky can run them.

An interface is provided in order to encapsulate some complex-behaviour functions and to make scripting easier. This scripting interface is described in the following section.

Important notes on the scripting engine

The scripting engine spawns a new thread for each script. Even though the thread is given maximum priority, this system is non-deterministic by nature, so no one can guarantee when the thread will run and when the API calls will be issued. Simply put, the scripts are not run in sync with the main loop. Instead, API calls are (for the most part) queued up and run after the current loop cycle, which updates the model and renders the frame. This prevents leaving the model in an inconsistent state by updating it from two threads at the same time.

The scripting API

The scripting API is a set of methods which can be called to interact with Gaia Sky. The available methods differ depending on the version of Gaia Sky.

API documentation

The only up-to-date API documentation for each version is in the interface header files themselves. Below is a list of links to the different APIs.

• API Gaia Sky master (development branch)

• API Gaia Sky 2.0.0

• API Gaia Sky 1.5.0

• API Gaia Sky 1.0.4

• API Gaia Sky 1.0.3

• API Gaia Sky 1.0.2

• API Gaia Sky 1.0.1

• API Gaia Sky 1.0.0

Using the scripting API

In order to import the scripting interface package in your script, you just need to import the default implementation EventScriptingInterface from the package gaia.cu9.ari.gaiaorbit.script:

# Import scripting interface
from gaia.cu9.ari.gaiaorbit.script import EventScriptingInterface

Then, we need to get the scripting interface instance before start using it.

gs = EventScriptingInterface.instance()

Now, we can start executing functions.

# Disable input
gs.disableInput()
gs.cameraStop()
gs.minimizeInterfaceWindow()

# Welcome
gs.setHeadlineMessage("Welcome to the Gaia Sky")
gs.setSubheadMessage("Explore Gaia, the Solar System and the whole Galaxy!")
[...]

More examples

You can find more examples by looking at the scripts folder in the Gaia Sky package.

How to run scripts

Each script is executed in its own thread in the virtual machine, and runs alongside Gaia Sky. In order to run a script, follow the procedure described in the Running scripts section.