Thingworx user context to pull windchill xml data

[ag-2]

Hello All,

Our requirement is to fetch from Windchill, the dropdown values of ThingWorx UI for certain attributes, (Enumeration data)

The idea  ...

1. write a Infoengine task (webject) in windchill (getObjectAttributes.xml), that returns all attributes for a given object type.

2. And then in ThingWorx, "load" the XML in a javascript service, parse XML and show attribute values in UI

But when I "load" the XML in my javascript service using LoadXML snippet, it expects username/password. Is it possible to use the user-context or user-session to LoadXML, because the user will be already logged-in to the system and also its not right approach to pass user credentials through code.

Thanks

Avinash

[smainente]

Hi Avinash,

You can use the Windchill Connector to invoke an I*E task and get back an Infotable.

WindchillConnector exposes the Generic Windchill SOAP Web Service (com.ptc.windchill.ws) and more :

ApplyService, CancelCheckOut, CheckIn, CheckOut, CompleteWorkItems, Create, CreateContentHolder, DelegateAction, DelegateWorkItems, Delete, DeleteContent, DescribeTypes, ExecuteTask, Fetch, GetDownloadHandles, GetIterationHistory, GetLifecycleHistory, GetUploadHandles, GetVersionHistory, GetWorkList, Link, ListContent, ListTypes, Move, Navigate, Query, Revise, StartWorkflow, SubscribeToEvent, UnsubscribeObjectEvents, Update

Note that you need to install a patch on the Windchill server to enable the ThingWorx integration (in WNC 11.0 M010 and later, it may work without if you just use the I*E base services listed above).

The Windchill Connector is part of the PTC Windchill Extension available in the Marketplace

[ag-2]

Hello Stephane,

Thanks for the quick response.

I tried Windchillconnector.ExecuteTask() that gives output as STRING to a datashape.

Challenge is if an attribute tag has multiple values, the string can hold only the last value. Perhaps if I can set a datashape field with BaseType as Array, the ExecuteTask() might store all the values of the particular attribute, but arrays are not allowed I guess.

Eg. <severity><value>high</value><value>medium</value><value>low</value></severity>. For the attribute "severity", if there are 3 enumerated values, then ExecuteTask is able to hold only the last value "low", because of overwriting the same datashape field "severity". Please advise.

[smainente]

I suspect that ExecuteTask() does not handled multi-values attribute.

As alternative, you can maybe concatenate all the attribute values into a single string (csv or other) in the I*E task directly

For example :

smaMVString is the source multi value attribute

smaMVStrings contains the resulting comma separated values

<%@page language="java" access="http|soap|internal"%>

<%@taglib uri="http://www.ptc.com/infoengine/taglib/core" prefix="ie"%>

<ie:webject name="Get-Properties" type="MGT">

    <ie:param name="ATTRIBUTE" data="wt.federation.ie.VMName"/>

    <ie:param name="GROUP_OUT" data="properties"/>

</ie:webject>

<ie:webject name="Query-Objects" type="OBJ">

    <ie:param name="INSTANCE" data="$(properties[0]wt.federation.ie.VMName[0])"/>

    <ie:param name="TYPE" data="wt.doc.WTDocument"/>

    <ie:param name="WHERE" data="name=MVDoc"/>

    <ie:param name="ATTRIBUTE" data="name,smaMVString" delim=","/>

    <ie:param name="GROUP_OUT" data="output"/>

</ie:webject>

<%

    Group g = getGroup("output");

    int hits = g.getElementCount();

    String mystrs="";

    Enumeration items = g.getElements();        

    while (items.hasMoreElements())

    {

       Element theItem = (Element)items.nextElement();

       Enumeration tempstrs = theItem.getAtt("smaMVString").getValues();

       while( tempstrs.hasMoreElements() ) {

            mystrs += tempstrs.nextElement();

            if( tempstrs.hasMoreElements() ) mystrs += ",";

       }

       theItem.addAtt( new Att( "smaMVStrings", mystrs));                                                             

    }

%>