= Python API =

The MUSCLE Python API closely resembles the C api but is slightly more brief. Currently, only Python 2.x is supported.
It is enabled by default on the latest version of MUSCLE, and can be forced to be enabled by setting
{{{
$ cd [MUSCLE_SRC]/build
$ export MUSCLE_BUILD_OPTIONS="-DBUILD_PYTHON=ON"
$ ./build.sh [MUSCLE_INSTALL_DIR]
}}}
It will then be built as the Python module. By doing
{{{
$ source [MUSCLE_INSTALL_DIR]/etc/muscle.profile
}}}
it gets included in the Python module path. The latest information about the module can always be found by doing
{{{
$ python
import muscle
help(muscle)
}}}

The API includes the following functions:
{{{
muscle.init(sys.argv)
muscle.finalize()

muscle.send(portName, data, [muscle.datatype])
muscle.receive(portName, [muscle.datatype])

muscle.will_stop()
muscle.kernel_name()
muscle.tmp_path()
muscle.has_property(propName)
muscle.get_property(propName)

muscle.log(msg)
muscle.fine(msg)
muscle.warning(msg)
muscle.severe(msg)
}}}
These functions behave just like their [wiki:"C++ API" C++ counterparts], except `init`, `send` and `receive`. For `init`, first run `import sys` and then `muscle.init(sys.argv)`. Send will accept a sequence of objects, given a muscle datatype. The following datatypes are recognized:
||= Object ||= Python data type ||= C data type ||
|| muscle.int || sequence of `int` || 32-bit `int` ||
|| muscle.long || sequence of `int` || 64-bit `long` ||
|| muscle.float || sequence of `double` || 32-bit `float` ||
|| muscle.double || sequence of `double` || 64-bit `double` ||
|| muscle.boolean || sequence of `bool` || `bool` ||
|| muscle.raw || `bytearray` || `char *` ||
|| muscle.string || `str` || `const char *` ||
The first five data types take any sequence, as long as the Python datatype that is contained matches. In some cases, it may be necessary to recreate a NumPy array so that the canonical Python datatypes are used. For example, with `int`:
{{{
import muscle, numpy as np

data = np.zeros(100, np.int)
muscle.send([int(d) for d in data], 'out', muscle.int)
}}}

[[Documentation|<< Back to Documentation]]