Creating a custom NetworkTable?

[virtuald]

If you were using python (a lot of teams find OpenCV easier to use in python), the pynetworktables documentation has a lot of examples of various networktables things you can look at: http://robotpy.readthedocs.io/projec.../examples.html

Curiously enough, I hadn't ever thought about the fact that one might think that a 'table' needs to be created. I'll add a note about that to our docs.

[jcbaker4050]

Originally Posted by virtuald

If you were using python (a lot of teams find OpenCV easier to use in python), the pynetworktables documentation has a lot of examples of various networktables things you can look at: http://robotpy.readthedocs.io/projec.../examples.html

Curiously enough, I hadn't ever thought about the fact that one might think that a 'table' needs to be created. I'll add a note about that to our docs.

I have noticed that there are far more C++ and Python OpenCV examples and tutorials than for Java, which is where most of our experience currently is. (Well, most of it actually still is in LabVIEW.) Python will be something to think about for future years.

As far as the table creation, I work with databases in my 8-5, so in my mind, a table doesn't exist unless you create it explicitly. Kind of funny how experience can help determine perspectives.

[Peter Johnson]

Originally Posted by jcbaker4050

As far as the table creation, I work with databases in my 8-5, so in my mind, a table doesn't exist unless you create it explicitly. Kind of funny how experience can help determine perspectives.

Tables in NetworkTables are a convention to help organize keys into logical groupings by using "/" as a separator; the actual NetworkTables key namespace is flat. Tables themselves don't really exist (except as an object in your code to keep track of the table path for convenience sake), so it's not actually necessary to create or delete them.

For example, getTable("/").putNumber("foo/bar", 5) and getTable("/foo").putNumber("bar", 5) are exactly equivalent (both set the key "/foo/bar" to 5).

[jcbaker4050]

Originally Posted by Peter Johnson

Tables in NetworkTables are a convention to help organize keys into logical groupings by using "/" as a separator; the actual NetworkTables key namespace is flat. Tables themselves don't really exist (except as an object in your code to keep track of the table path for convenience sake), so it's not actually necessary to create or delete them.

For example, getTable("/").putNumber("foo/bar", 5) and getTable("/foo").putNumber("bar", 5) are exactly equivalent (both set the key "/foo/bar" to 5).

Peter, thanks for the additional information. That's a bit different than Oracle database tables, which is what I'm used to. Makes sense, though. And seems easy enough to work with now that I've had my misconceptions cleared up.