Embedding a SAMP Hub in a GUI

Overview

If you wish to embed a SAMP hub in your Python Graphical User Interface (GUI) tool, you will need to start the hub programmatically using:

from astropy.samp import SAMPHubServer
hub = SAMPHubServer()
hub.start()

This launches the hub in a thread and is non-blocking. If you are not interested in connections from web SAMP clients, then you can use:

from astropy.samp import SAMPHubServer
hub = SAMPHubServer(web_profile=False)
hub.start()

This should be all you need to do. However, if you want to keep the Web Profile active, there is an additional consideration: when a web SAMP client connects, you will need to ask the user whether they accept the connection (for security reasons). By default, the confirmation message is a text-based message in the terminal, but if you have a GUI tool, you will likely want to open a GUI dialog instead.

To do this, you will need to define a class that handles the dialog, and then pass an instance of the class to SAMPHubServer (not the class itself). This class should inherit from astropy.samp.WebProfileDialog and add the following:

1. A GUI timer callback that periodically calls WebProfileDialog.handle_queue (available as self.handle_queue).

2. A show_dialog method to display a consent dialog. It should take the following arguments:

   • samp_name: The name of the application making the request.

   • details: A dictionary of details about the client making the request. The only key in this dictionary required by the SAMP standard is samp.name which gives the name of the client making the request.

   • client: A hostname, port pair containing the client address.

   • origin: A string containing the origin of the request.

3. Based on the user response, the show_dialog should call WebProfileDialog.consent or WebProfileDialog.reject. This may, in some cases, be the result of another GUI callback.

Example of embedding a SAMP hub in a Tk application

The following code is a full example of a Tk application that watches for web SAMP connections and opens the appropriate dialog:

import tkinter as tk
import tkinter.messagebox as tkMessageBox

from astropy.samp import SAMPHubServer
from astropy.samp.hub import WebProfileDialog

MESSAGE = """
A Web application which declares to be

Name: {name}
Origin: {origin}

is requesting to be registered with the SAMP Hub.  Pay attention
that if you permit its registration, such application will acquire
all current user privileges, like file read/write.

Do you give your consent?
"""

class TkWebProfileDialog(WebProfileDialog):
    def __init__(self, root):
        self.root = root
        self.wait_for_dialog()

    def wait_for_dialog(self):
        self.handle_queue()
        self.root.after(100, self.wait_for_dialog)

    def show_dialog(self, samp_name, details, client, origin):
        text = MESSAGE.format(name=samp_name, origin=origin)

        response = tkMessageBox.askyesno(
            'SAMP Hub', text,
            default=tkMessageBox.NO)

        if response:
            self.consent()
        else:
            self.reject()

# Start up Tk application
root = tk.Tk()
tk.Label(root, text="Example SAMP Tk application",
         font=("Helvetica", 36), justify=tk.CENTER).pack(pady=200)
root.geometry("500x500")
root.update()

# Start up SAMP hub
h = SAMPHubServer(web_profile_dialog=TkWebProfileDialog(root))
h.start()

try:
    # Main GUI loop
    root.mainloop()
except KeyboardInterrupt:
    pass

h.stop()

If you run the above script, a window will open that says “Example SAMP Tk application.” If you then go to the following page, for example:

http://astrojs.github.io/sampjs/examples/pinger.html

and click on the Ping button, you will see the dialog open in the Tk application. Once you click on “CONFIRM,” future “Ping” calls will no longer bring up the dialog.