topic Re: Strictly Type Constant Refnum in LabVIEW

Strictly Type Constant Refnum

paul_cardinale — Mon, 17 Oct 2022 14:31:47 GMT

It's easy enough to create a Refnum control for a strictly typed cluster control.

I want to create one for a strictly typed cluster constant.

Is that even possible?

Re: Strictly Type Constant Refnum

zou — Mon, 17 Oct 2022 14:59:28 GMT

Yes. It's possible.

Just enumerate all objects on the diagram, and find the one with classname as clusterconstant.

Re: Strictly Type Constant Refnum

Yamaeda — Mon, 17 Oct 2022 15:23:30 GMT

but ... why?

Re: Strictly Type Constant Refnum

paul_cardinale — Mon, 17 Oct 2022 15:56:05 GMT

@zou wrote:

Yes. It's possible.

Just enumerate all objects on the diagram, and find the one with classname as clusterconstant.

That's not even close to what I asked for. I want to set the server class of a refnum control to a strictly typedef'd cluster constant.

Re: Strictly Type Constant Refnum

paul_cardinale — Mon, 17 Oct 2022 15:57:14 GMT

@Yamaeda wrote:

but ... why?

For the "Affected Items" typedef for a custom shortcut menu.

Re: Strictly Type Constant Refnum

zou — Mon, 17 Oct 2022 16:39:05 GMT

Not sure what you mean.

Are your try to something like this:

Could you should us your code?

Re: Strictly Type Constant Refnum

paul_cardinale — Mon, 17 Oct 2022 16:56:52 GMT

@zou wrote:

Not sure what you mean.

Are your try to something like this:

Could you should us your code?

Are you only reading every 5th word that I write?

I want a Refnum Control to have a VI Server Class of a strict cluster type.

Re: Strictly Type Constant Refnum

billko — Mon, 17 Oct 2022 17:18:06 GMT

It might not be possible, since having a strictly typed constant is only enabled by a special flag (which I believe you are intimately aware of). I don't believe you can even make a reference for ANY kind of BD constant.

But I guess that's why you're asking, because you know all of this and you want to see if anyone has some kind of undocumented way to make this happen.

Edit: What is to be gained by using a BD constant ref instead of a control ref? I don't see any practical reason why a control couldn't be substituted for a BD constant.

Re: Strictly Type Constant Refnum

billko — Mon, 17 Oct 2022 17:11:55 GMT

@paul_cardinale wrote:

@zou wrote:

Not sure what you mean.

Are your try to something like this:

Could you should us your code?

Are you only reading every 5th word that I write?

I want a Refnum Control to have a VI Server Class of a strict cluster type.

I think you need to give zou a break, as this user is usually spot on with their answer when they chime in.

Re: Strictly Type Constant Refnum

paul_cardinale — Mon, 17 Oct 2022 17:26:41 GMT

@billko wrote:

It might not be possible, since having a strictly typed constant is only enabled by a special flag (which I believe you are intimately aware of). I don't believe you can even make a reference for ANY kind of BD constant.

But I guess that's why you're asking, because you know all of this and you want to see if anyone has some kind of undocumented way to make this happen.

Edit: What is to be gained by using a BD constant ref instead of a control ref? I don't see any practical reason why a control couldn't be substituted for a BD constant.

You can make a reference to a BD constant:

But I want the reference to be for a specific type of cluster, not a generic cluster.

I want this for the "Affected Items" typedef for a custom shortcut menu.

Re: Strictly Type Constant Refnum

billko — Mon, 17 Oct 2022 18:00:46 GMT

I'm going to say that NI hadn't thought through all the consequences of enabling strictly typed constants and doesn't show "Include Data Type" for constant references of any type. I don't know if strictly typed constants are officially supported, so I don't know whether this should be considered a bug or not.

Re: Strictly Type Constant Refnum

raphschru — Tue, 18 Oct 2022 00:17:46 GMT

@billko wrote:

It might not be possible, since having a strictly typed constant is only enabled by a special flag

Which flag are you talking about ?

The closest I know is "EnableStrictTypedefConstantConfiguration", but this is about typedef'd constants on the diagram, which is different from strictly-typed constant refnums.

Out of curiosity, I have tried to merge the type code of a strictly-typed control refnum with the type code of a generic constant refnum, then using "Flattened String To Variant" and "VI.Create from Data Type" to create a chimaera data type that would hypothetically be a strictly-typed constant refnum, but without success. The additional type info added to the constant refnum is simply ignored =(

So sadly I think it is not possible…

I guess you want to set the class of the Affected Items of your plugin to a specific strictly-typed constant to avoid further filtering on the data type ? Is it a matter of performance for the plugin ?

Re: Strictly Type Constant Refnum

billko — Tue, 18 Oct 2022 02:31:27 GMT

@raphschru wrote:

@billko wrote:

It might not be possible, since having a strictly typed constant is only enabled by a special flag

Which flag are you talking about ?

The closest I know is "EnableStrictTypedefConstantConfiguration", but this is about typedef'd constants on the diagram, which is different from strictly-typed constant refnums.

Out of curiosity, I have tried to merge the type code of a strictly-typed control refnum with the type code of a generic constant refnum, then using "Flattened String To Variant" and "VI.Create from Data Type" to create a chimaera data type that would hypothetically be a strictly-typed constant refnum, but without success. The additional type info added to the constant refnum is simply ignored =(

So sadly I think it is not possible…

I guess you want to set the class of the Affected Items of your plugin to a specific strictly-typed constant to avoid further filtering on the data type ? Is it a matter of performance for the plugin ?

I have to admit I was pretty confused about what we were talking about.

Re: Strictly Type Constant Refnum

pauldavey — Tue, 18 Oct 2022 04:00:04 GMT

You have a lot more options under "GObject" than I do in my LabVIEW installation. Are you using an LabVIEW ini key?

@paul_cardinale wrote:

Re: Strictly Type Constant Refnum

Yamaeda — Tue, 18 Oct 2022 08:09:44 GMT

I'm assuming you're using the SuperSecretStuff-key or something, since i don't have constants as a reference option.

However, it seems you can drop a .ctl in a static VI ref and type cast a GObject ref that way. Would that work?

Re: Strictly Type Constant Refnum

raphschru — Tue, 18 Oct 2022 08:21:50 GMT

@pauldavey wrote:

You have a lot more options under "GObject" than I do in my LabVIEW installation. Are you using an LabVIEW ini key?

What I see is:

- VI Scripting ON to access scripting classes (light blue nodes) like Constants and other diagram objects + additional scripting methods and properties on "normal" classes.

- INI Key "SuperSecretPrivateSpecialStuff=True" to access private classes (brown nodes) like Provider, LVTarget, CopyExpert, ... but these are hardly useful even for advanced scripting. If you add this INI key you will have cluttered menus for additional functions that might be useful only 0,0001% of the time.

Re: Strictly Type Constant Refnum

wiebe@CARYA — Tue, 18 Oct 2022 08:42:52 GMT

@paul_cardinale wrote:

It's easy enough to create a Refnum control for a strictly typed cluster control.

I want to create one for a strictly typed cluster constant.

Is that even possible?

I'm also not entirely sure what you want or how to test if it works.

Anyway, if creating a control is easy, creating a constant from it might work:

This:

Turns the strict (cluster) control reference to a strict (cluster) constant:

Both are references to a specific cluster:

If that isn't what you're looking for, I'd need some code for illustration...

Is this something you can create manually (as an example)?

Re: Strictly Type Constant Refnum

raphschru — Tue, 18 Oct 2022 08:56:23 GMT

"Creating a strictly-typed control refnum constant" is different from "Creating a strictly-typed constant refnum control".

In the first case the data type is a refnum of the Control class, in the second case the data type is a refnum of the Constant class.

Then you can effectively make a control or a constant out of these 2 data types, but this is not what it's about.

We are talking about an hypothetic strictly-typed constant refnum data type, which mimics the strictly-typed control refnum data type.

You cannot create this manually because it surely does not exist at all...

Re: Strictly Type Constant Refnum

wiebe@CARYA — Tue, 18 Oct 2022 09:03:57 GMT

@raphschru wrote:

"Creating a strictly-typed control refnum constant" is different from "Creating a strictly-typed constant refnum control".

In the first case the data type is a refnum of the Control class, in the second case the data type is a refnum of the Constant class.

Then you can effectively make a control or a constant out of these 2 data types, but this is not what it's about.

We are talking about an hypothetic strictly-typed constant refnum data type, which mimics the strictly-typed control refnum data type.

You cannot create this manually because it surely does not exist at all...

That actually helped.

Would have been a good first reply...

I hope you all see that this isn't that obvious.

Re: Strictly Type Constant Refnum

wiebe@CARYA — Tue, 18 Oct 2022 09:46:26 GMT

@raphschru wrote:
You cannot create this manually because it surely does not exist at all...

I agree.

It's Sisyphean, at least in current LV versions.