python, find a node's attribute by type instead of name

[pushpathadam]

Hi,

how would one find an attribute by type instead of by name? I'm writing a short python script to

dump out a list of all the external files used in a hip file. In most contexts the node

type I need is called "file" and the attribute I evaluate is also called "file" or "filename1".

Pretty trivial.

However in shops a texture/environment/whatever map can be called anything you want ..the only

consistent hook I have is that the attribute is of type "file".

If I get a list of all the node's params..

paramlist = node.parms()

for param in paramlist:

paramtype = param.type()

I was hoping to do the above, same way param.name() works but no such luck. Is there a way to go

about doing this?

thanks

Tom

[symek]

Hi,

how would one find an attribute by type instead of by name? I'm writing a short python script to

dump out a list of all the external files used in a hip file. In most contexts the node

type I need is called "file" and the attribute I evaluate is also called "file" or "filename1".

Pretty trivial.

However in shops a texture/environment/whatever map can be called anything you want ..the only

consistent hook I have is that the attribute is of type "file".

If I get a list of all the node's params..

paramlist = node.parms()

for param in paramlist:

paramtype = param.type()

I was hoping to do the above, same way param.name() works but no such luck. Is there a way to go

about doing this?

thanks

Tom

How about hou.fileRefernces(), which returns a list of tuples consisting with parms and its file strings:

((<hou.Parm file in /obj/geo1/file1>, '/tmp/teapot.bgeo'),)

It replaces hscript fdependls command which seems to do what you're after. Alternatively there is a convenient opextern command.

If you need to write your own stuff, the only type you can refer to is a string parameter. You could, for example, check every string parm, if the value is a file on disk (os.path.isfile()), but if a file is missing, your method will fail.

Another method would be to refer to hou.StringParmTemplate.stringType() which returns stringParmType.FileReference for a file parameters, except no one can guarantee that there won't be any plain (regular) string params instead of file reference type.

[pushpathadam]

Thank you! Exactly what I was looking for.

One unexpected result was that it caught some file type attributes buried in an otl that I wouldn;t

have known to look for.

-Tom