CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythonperforce
ArtOfWarfare
ArtOfWarfare

Reputation: 21476

Perforce API: Get Latest Revision of a Subdirectory

I have downloaded and installed the Perforce API for Python.

I'm able to run the examples on this page: http://www.perforce.com/perforce/doc.current/manuals/p4script/03_python.html#1127434

But unfortunately the documentation seems incomplete. For example, the P4 class has a method called run_sync, but it's not documented anywhere (in fact, it doesn't even show up if you run dir(p4) in the Python interactive interpreter, despite the fact that you can use the method just fine in the interactive interpreter.)

So I'm struggling with figuring out how to use the API for anything beyond the trivial examples on the page I linked to above.

I would like to write a script which simply downloads the latest revision of a subdirectory to the filesystem of the computer running it and does nothing else. I don't want the server to change in any way. I don't want there to be any indication that the files came from Perforce (as opposed to if you get the files via the Perforce application, it'll mark the files in your file system as read only until you check them out or whatever. That's silly - I just need to pull down a snapshot of what the subdirectory looked like at the moment the script was run.)

Upvotes: 1

Views: 1913

Answers (1)

Samwise
Samwise

Reputation: 71454

The Python API follows the same basic structure as the command line client (both are very thin wrappers over the same underlying API), so you'll want to look at the command line client documentation; for example, look at "p4 sync" to understand how "run_sync" in P4Python works:

http://www.perforce.com/perforce/r14.2/manuals/cmdref/p4_sync.html

For the task you're describing I would do the following (I'll describe it in terms of Perforce commands since my Python is a little rusty; once you know what commands you're running it should be pretty simple to translate into Python, since the P4Python doc has examples of things like creating and modifying a client spec, which is the hardest part):

1) Create a client that maps the desired depot directory to the desired local filesystem location, e.g. if you want the directory "//depot/foo/..." downloaded to "/usr/team/foo" you'd make a client that looks like:

Client: mytempclient123847
Root: /usr/team/foo
View:
    //depot/foo/... //mytempclient123847/...

You should set the "allwrite" option on the client since you said don't want the synced files to be read-only:

Options: allwrite noclobber nocompress unlocked nomodtime rmdir

2) Sync, using the "-p" option to minimize server impact (the server will not record that you "have" the files).

3) Delete the client.

(I'm omitting some details like making sure that you're authenticated correctly -- that's a whole other potential challenge depending on your server's security and whether it's using external authentication, but it sounds like that's not the part you're having trouble with.)

Upvotes: 1

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