Script Tip Friday- Filter The Results of a dir Command

We have dual forces for today’s Script Tip: Pernelle Marone Hitz , Lead APplications Engineer at Ansys, and Vishnu Venkataraman, Sr. Applications Engineer at Ansys. In this tip we’ll go over how to filter the results of a?dir?command.

Pernelle: To check all available methods and properties of an object we often use the?dir()?command.

For example, to check what’s available for an object referenced by “connect”, we’ll use:

dir(connect)        

If the returned list is long, it is very useful to filter it by some keywords that we’re interested in. For this, the?filter()?method can be used. For example, to get all methods and properties that have a “Geometry” keyword in their name, use:

filter(lambda x: ("Geometry" in x), dir(connect))        

Vishnu: To create a button using what Pernelle mentioned above could be useful tool too.

All you need to do is import the button in mechanical to use this.

How to use:

1. Click on an object in mechanical tree
2. Click on this button
3. Enter a keyword to search for methods and properties
4. Returns list of all methods and properties available.

# Script:
import clr
clr.AddReference("Ans.Utilities")
clr.AddReference('Ans.UI.Toolkit')
clr.AddReference('Ans.UI.Toolkit.Base')
import Ansys.UI.Toolkit
import Ansys.UI.Toolkit.Base
a = ExtAPI.DataModel.Tree.ActiveObjects[0]
class Example1Window(Ansys.UI.Toolkit.Window):
aLabel = None
    aButton = None
    aTextBox = None
    mainPanel = None
def __init__(self):
        self.Location = Ansys.UI.Toolkit.Drawing.Point(500,500)
        self.Text = 'search string'
        self.Size = Ansys.UI.Toolkit.Drawing.Size(500,500)
        self.StatusBar.Visible = False
        self.__BuildUI() # this will be defined later
        self.BeforeClose += Ansys.UI.Toolkit.WindowCloseEventDelegate(self.Window_Close)
def __BuildUI(self):
        self.mainPanel = Ansys.UI.Toolkit.TableLayoutPanel()
        self.Add(self.mainPanel)
        self.mainPanel.Columns.Add(Ansys.UI.Toolkit.TableLayoutSizeType.Percent, 100)
        self.mainPanel.Rows.Add(Ansys.UI.Toolkit.TableLayoutSizeType.Percent, 33)
        self.mainPanel.Rows.Add(Ansys.UI.Toolkit.TableLayoutSizeType.Percent, 34)
        self.mainPanel.Rows.Add(Ansys.UI.Toolkit.TableLayoutSizeType.Percent, 33)
        self.aLabel = Ansys.UI.Toolkit.Label('String Below')
        self.mainPanel.Controls.Add(self.aLabel, 0, 0)
        self.aTextBox = Ansys.UI.Toolkit.TextBox()
        self.aTextBox.Text = 'Search string'
        self.mainPanel.Controls.Add(self.aTextBox, 1, 0)
        self.aButton = Ansys.UI.Toolkit.Button('Search')
        self.aButton.Click += Ansys.UI.Toolkit.EventDelegate(self.On_Click)
        self.mainPanel.Controls.Add(self.aButton, 2, 0)
def On_Click(self, sender, args):
          clr.AddReference("Ans.UI.Toolkit")
          clr.AddReference("Ans.UI.Toolkit.Base")
          mystring = str(self.aTextBox.Text)
          try:
              result = filter(lambda x: mystring in x.lower(), dir(a)+dir(a.InternalObject))
          except:
              result = filter(lambda x: mystring in x.lower(), dir(a))
          Ansys.UI.Toolkit.MessageBox.Show(self, str(result), 'Attributes found -->', Ansys.UI.Toolkit.MessageBoxType.Info, Ansys.UI.Toolkit.MessageBoxButtons.OK)
          print self.aTextBox.Text
          
    def Window_Close(self, sender, args):
        Ansys.UI.Toolkit.Application.Quit()
class ExampleOne:
ex1 = None
    def __init__(self):
        self.ex1 = Example1Window()
    
    def Run(self):
        Ansys.UI.Toolkit.Application.Initialize()
        self.ex1.Show()
        Ansys.UI.Toolkit.Application.Run()
        
example = ExampleOne()
example.Run()
        

Do YOU have a Script Tip you'd like to share? Comment below and someone from Ansys will reach out so we can feature you on next week's Script Tip Friday!