Communicating with the UI

As mentioned previously, once pyblish-qml is up and running, it will also be set-up to listen on port 9090 so all we need to do in order to speak with it is connect.

Ensure you have pyblish-qml running in either debug-mode, via a host or pyblish-tray before attempting this.

import xmlrpclib
proxy = xmlrpclib.ServerProxy("http://127.0.0.1:9090")
proxy.show(9001) # Port number of the a host

The 9001 is your "business card". It let's pyblish-qml know that the client looking to communicate with it can be communicated with in return via this port. In this way, communicating is bi-directional.

Under normal circumstances, this port number is established during host initialisation.

import pyblish_maya
pyblish_maya.setup()  # A port number is assigned

The port number is then stored "behind the scenes" in an environment variable called PYBLISH_CLIENT_PORT and it is this number which is automatically passed upon the user pressing the Publish menu-item.

import os
assert os.environ["PYBLISH_CLIENT_PORT"] == "9001"

Note that you may see a different number, such as 9002, depending on how many hosts you currently have open. Each host has a unique number, starting from 9001.

You can also use the convenience function from within a host provided by the pyblish-qml module.

from pyblish_qml import client
proxy = client.proxy()
proxy.show(9001)

The convenience function is much the same, but also includes a reasonable time-out for when the host is unresponsive.

Here are some of the functionality exposed via the proxy.

Having problems?

Without the UI running, you will get the familiar error message.

No connection could be made because the target machine actively refused it