Developing your own framework

Introduction

This document outlines some of the technical details relating to Toolkit framework development.

Table of Contents:

• What is a Toolkit framework?
• Pre-made ShotGrid frameworks
• Creating a Framework
• Using Frameworks from hooks

What is a Toolkit framework?

Toolkit frameworks are very similar to Toolkit apps. The main difference is that a framework is not something you would run on its own. Instead, you would import a framework into your app or engine. It allows you to keep reusable logic separate so that it can be used in multiple engines and apps. An example of a framework would be a library of reusable UI components, that might contain a playlist picker component. You could then import that framework in your app, and plug in the playlist picker component to your main app UI.

Pre-made ShotGrid frameworks

ShotGrid supplies some premade frameworks that you may find useful when creating your own apps. The Qt Widgets and ShotGrid Utils frameworks are especially useful in app development.

Creating a Framework

When it comes to creating your own framework, the setup is pretty much the same as writing an app, and you can get more information on that in the “Developing your own apps” guide. Instead of an app.py file, a framework has a framework.py at the root of the framework package, that contains a class deriving from the Framework base class. Also, your framework won’t register a command with the engine.

Instead, you can either store methods directly on the framework instance itself, or store modules inside the python/ folder. For example, the shotgunutils framework stores them in the python folder. To access them, you would import the framework, and then use the import_module() method, to access the submodules.

The API docs contain examples on how to import frameworks.

Using Frameworks from hooks

It can be useful to create a framework so that you can share some common logic across hooks. A framework can be used in an app, or other framework hooks, even if the app/framework doesn’t explicitly require it in the manifest file, via the Hook.load_framework() method. Note frameworks can’t be used in core hooks even with this method.