hou.HDASection class

Represents a “section” of data stored along with a digital asset.

A digital asset stores its contents in a number of different pieces of data called sections. Each section is named and contains an arbitrarily sized piece of data, often textual. Each section is like a file embedded inside the definition, and Houdini uses specially named sections to store the node contents, list of parameters, etc. You can embed your own data into a digital asset by putting it inside a section.

Any parameter in Houdini that references a file can also reference a section inside a digital asset. For example, if car is an object-level digital asset and the section is named "texture.jpg", you can reference that texture with opdef:/Object/car?texture.jpg. Note that hou.readFile also supports this opdef: syntax.

By moving files into digital asset sections, you can build self-contained digital assets that can be distributed via a single otl file.

Note that section names may contain '/'.

Methods

name(self) → str

Return the name of this section.

Note that is is not possible to rename a section, but the following function will emulate renaming:

def renameSection(section):
    '''Rename a section by removing it and creating a new one.  Return the new section.'''
    new_section = section.definition().addSection(new_name, section.contents())
    section.destroy()
    return new_section

definition(self) → hou.HDADefinition

Return the digital asset definition containing this section.

contents(self) → str

Return a string containing the contents of this section.

def saveSectionToFile(section, file_name):
    '''Given a section, save it to a file.'''
    section_file = file(file_name, "w")
    section_file.write(section.contents())
    section_file.close()

size(self) → int

Return the number of bytes in the contents. This method is a shortcut for len(self.contents()).

setContents(self, contents)

Set the contents of this section to the given string. A section may contain binary information, like bgeo files, images, etc.

See hou.HDADefinition.addSection for an example of how to create a section from a file on disk.

destroy(self)

Remove this section from the HDA definition. You can also remove a section with hou.HDADefinition.removeSection, and this method is equivalent to self.definition().removeSection(self.name()).

Only remove sections that you explicitly added. Do not remove the special sections that Houdini uses to store the contents of the digital asset definition, or Houdini will generate errors or strange side effects.

To add a section, use hou.HDADefinition.addSection.

modificationTime(self) → int

Return the time when the section was last modified. This time is returned as a POSIX timestamp, such as is returned by time.time().

>>> hou.nodeType(hou.cop2NodeTypeCategory(), "colorwheel").definition()
<hou.HDADefinition of Cop2 colorwheel in /opt/hfs9.5/houdini/otls/OPlibCop2.otl>
>>> definition = hou.nodeType(hou.cop2NodeTypeCategory(), "colorwheel").definition()
>>> definition.sections().keys()
['VflCode', 'DialogScript', 'VexCode']
>>> section = definition.sections()['VflCode']
>>> section.modificationTime()
1177535169
>>> import datetime, time
>>> datetime.datetime.fromtimestamp(section.modificationTime())
datetime.datetime(2007, 4, 25, 17, 6, 9)
>>> time.ctime(section.modificationTime())
'Wed Apr 25 17:06:09 2007'