node path completion like built in editor/shell

[drichardson]

Implement object node completion that works like the build in editor/shell. For example, in Python shell, when you enter hou.node("/obj/ a list of objects from that HIP file appear.

In VEX, this would be triggered by functions marked as taking a node path parameter, like ch.

Questions

• What HIP file (if any) is current being edited?
• How to specify a HIP file for auto-completion if Vim was not started from Houdini as an external editor (i.e., you are just editing a VEX file on disk directly)?
• How does the Python, HScript Textport, built-in VEX editor perform node name completion? Are they in the same process as Houdini or are they communicating with it via some IPC mechanism?

Things to Look Into

hou.node.glob

A Python IPC server running in the HIP file could use hou.node.glob to implement node name completion.

Example:

>>> [n.name() for n in hou.root().glob("/*")]
['obj', 'out', 'ch', 'shop', 'img', 'vex', 'mat']
>>> [n.name() for n in hou.root().glob("/o*")]
['obj', 'out']
>>> [n.name() for n in hou.root().glob("/obj/*")]
['terrain', 'Scatter', 'Overlap_Grain_Solve', 'Scatter_Objects']

Houdini Environment Variables

Houdini's Environment Variables contain information that may be useful to give context, for example the HFS and HIP variables.