rpc
COMPAS runs in many different environments, but some environments
limit the availablity of libraries, for example, when running COMPAS from
an IronPython environment like Rhino/Grasshopper, plenty of the CPython libraries
such as numpy, scipy, etc are not usable.
To workaround this limitation, COMPAS provides two mechanisms to access the
CPython environment seemlessly from any other Python environment. One of them is
called XFunc (compas.utilities.XFunc) and it works very effectively to
make single, but expensive calls that execute long-running bits of code. The other
one is called RPC, which stands for Remote Procedure Call` and it allows to
create a transparent proxy/connection between our environment and the one where
all the fast libraries and dependencies of COMPAS are installed. It also allows
to re-use the same process for many small calls, making it much more effective for
the cases in which the required functionality is not easily isolated in one
long-running function.
Proxy
In order to use the RPC communication package, we create an instance of the
Proxy class to one specific package that we want to have access to.
After the proxy is created, it behaves as a regular Python on which the functions
of the proxied package are available as if they were directly present in our environment.
Create a proxy object as intermediary between client code and remote functionality. |
RPC Command-line utility
Besides the API of the RPC module, there is a command-line utility provided to start and stop the RPC server easily from the terminal.
To start a new RPC server use the following command (default port is 1753):
$ compas_rpc start [--port PORT]
Conversely, to stop an existing RPC server:
$ compas_rpc stop [--port PORT]
Note
If COMPAS is installed in a virtual environment, make sure it is activated before trying to use this command-line utility.