NetworkTableInstance startClient() method

Jim1949 · January 1, 2023, 6:58pm

In the current version of wipilib (v2023.1.1-beta-7) the startClient() methods on NetworkTableInstance that allowed one to specify the server address and/or port appear to have gone missing. There is now a startClient3() and a startClient4() method, both of which accept a string argument mysteriously called “identity”. I tried looking at the source on Github here:

but oddly it seems that the networktableinstance.java file has also gone missing. Looking back through the tags, it appears to have disappeared as of v2023.1.1-alpha-1.

Does anyone know what the intent was? The startClient(address) method was useful when you were testing with a network tables server that was not on the robot.

Thad_House · January 1, 2023, 7:03pm

github.com

wpilibsuite/allwpilib/blob/f1151d375f642a59eb00c69d9ba29da13c905b55/ntcore/src/generate/java/NetworkTableInstance.java.jinja

// Copyright (c) FIRST and other WPILib contributors.
// Open Source Software; you can modify and/or share it under the terms of
// the WPILib BSD license file in the root directory of this project.

package edu.wpi.first.networktables;

import edu.wpi.first.util.WPIUtilJNI;
import edu.wpi.first.util.concurrent.Event;
import edu.wpi.first.util.datalog.DataLog;
import java.util.EnumSet;
import java.util.HashMap;
import java.util.Map;
import java.util.OptionalLong;
import java.util.concurrent.ConcurrentHashMap;
import java.util.concurrent.ConcurrentMap;
import java.util.concurrent.TimeUnit;
import java.util.concurrent.locks.Condition;
import java.util.concurrent.locks.ReentrantLock;
import java.util.function.Consumer;

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The instance file is now template generated.

For connecting to a specific server, you’d call startClient4 (or startClient3 if you wanted to connect to an old NT3 server), and then call setServer, which is where address and port would come from.

The identity string is just a unique identifier to identify the client to the server. It has nothing to do with addresses

Jim1949 · January 1, 2023, 11:53pm

Thanks for the help.

Joe_Ross · January 2, 2023, 1:05am