Vtk-js: Support for <Array> & <Array type="string"> in XMLReader

[danmindru]

Hi there,

Working with the attached data, I've noticed that:

1. <Array> under <CellData> is not being processed (only <DataArray> is)
   I wonder why?
   It might also be a lack of knowledge of the format on my end, but it seems like both should be supported.

1. Even if <Array> was processed, the string type would not be supported.
   Is that deliberate?

Again, it might be a hole in my knowledge regarding the format. Perhaps there is another mechanism to read <Array type="String"> that I am not aware of.

Do you have any hints / suggestions?
Thanks for the help,
Dan

example-vtp.zip

[jourdain]

Hi Dan,

We skipped StringArray for now as we mostly focused on numerical data. Adding the Strings should not be too bad but it will require some coding.

Sorry about that,

Seb

[danmindru]

No worries :)
Numerical data display is more common in most cases I suppose, so that makes sense.

Do you have any plans to support string arrays in the near future?
Thanks,
Dan

[jourdain]

We sure want to support them. But only when we will need them that we will put the effort to integrate them. This could come from a customer request unless it get contributed by someone from the community. As of today, I don't have anyone (except you) that requested it. ;-)

[danmindru]

Absolutely.
As it is, it's not the most important thing on my list, so I'm on the same page. If it becomes more important, we'd be happy to contribute one way or another :)

[aminechir]

Hi,

I am facing the same problem for reading a vtp file containing a String Array in the section. How did you resolve your problem temporarly @danmindru ?

In my case , I have just some few words to assign to each cell, So I can use a integer array for the cells and add a field data which gives the association between the id and the string I wanted to assign

[jourdain]

The latest stable version of Glance and vtk.js does properly skip the string arrays.

[aminechir]

I tried with the last version of vtk.js (13.4.2), precisely no, I don't want to skip the string arrays

If I serialize a polydata incore from javascript, String arrays are parsed and I can access Field Data.

But if I try to use the xml parser for from an existing .vtp file, I get two problems:

• string arrays inside CellData are not parsed : you already say that this feature is not implemented yet

• all the FieldData are not parsed: I see that in XMLPolyDataReader class that
  effectively, FieldData are not included in the parser. Is it planed to parse the FieldData arrays ? Or maybe there is another way to do this ?

[devngc]

HI @jourdain,
Has there been any update on this? I am too interested in loading string-based arrays in Paraview Glance.