Sep , 2006 v FME Worldwide User Conference - Vancouver FME Translation Customization with Python Tom Weir, Safe Software

Customizing FME Translations with Python 2 Background  Who is Tom Weir?  Safe Software  Lead Developer on the these projects:  Python ;)  KML Writer  Template Writer  Windows installer  fmepedia.com  FME GENTRANS

Customizing FME Translations with Python 3 A Little History  FME 2004 ICE  Wouldn’t it be cool if we had a Python FME Objects API?

Customizing FME Translations with Python 4 A Little History  FME 2004 ICE  Wouldn’t it be cool if we had a Python FME Objects API?  FME 2005  Can fme.exe run python scripts?

Customizing FME Translations with Python 5 A Little History  FME 2004 ICE  Wouldn’t it be cool if we had a Python FME Objects API  FME 2005  Can fme.exe run python scripts?  FME 2006  How about running.py scripts before/after a translation?

Customizing FME Translations with Python 6 A Little History  FME 2004 ICE  Wouldn’t it be cool if we had a Python FME Objects API  FME 2005  Can fme.exe run python scripts?  FME 2006  How about running.py scripts before/after a translation?  FME 2006 GB  We’ve How

Customizing FME Translations with Python 7 The Future: FME 2007  PythonFactory  PythonCaller (Enhanced)  PythonCreator  Workbench Script Editor

Customizing FME Translations with Python 8 Preliminaries  You must provide your own Python  2.3, 2.4, or 2.5  Python.org or ActiveState.com distro  FME will choose a python to load  Python 2.4 is currently preferred  Preference will change to 2.5 shortly  Override with the “FME_PYTHON_VERSION” directive

Customizing FME Translations with Python 9 pyfme  Python FME Objects Wrapper  Full access to the FME Objects API  No Rich Geometry or Raster support (yet)  Docs here:   Important Classes:  FMEFeature & FMELogfile  Used for creating Python apps  Also used by PythonFactory

Customizing FME Translations with Python 10 Begin/End Python  AKA Workbench “Startup/Shutdown” Python Scripts  Run Python scripts before and after the FME translation  Files executed in the __main__ namespace  FME sets status & statistics variables  Useful for performing custom workflow actions & reporting

Customizing FME Translations with Python  Python fn accepts feature + arbitrary # of parameters  Python fn returns string or none  Ancient history: PythonCaller now uses PythonFactory

Customizing FME Translations with Python 12 PythonFactory  Can be implemented using Python functions, classes, or instances  Functions are single-in single-out  Classes/Instances allow multiple-in multiple-out scenarios  Much more flexible  Can be used to create readers & writers work-alikes

Customizing FME Translations with Python 13 Workbench Goodies  PythonCaller Transformer  PythonCreator Transformer  New “Advanced” Workbench Settings:  Startup/Shutdown Python script parameters  Wicked cool script editor

Customizing FME Translations with Python 14 Why use Python?  Web Services  Text parsing  Custom algorithms  Custom logging  Readlets  Friendlier scripting syntax

Customizing FME Translations with Python 15 Examples  Available at

Customizing FME Translations with Python 16 Further Information    Grab me anytime during the UC  Ask me about:  Python ;)  KML  FME Deployment (aka the installer)  fmepedia.com