SINCE 3.4

Overview

A Talon XVM has the ability to discover annotated 'Command' methods provided by an application. Such commands can be invoked remotely by tools in an out of band fashion with an application's message driven event handlers to perform administrative functions. The command framework is designed to work in the context of command line tools, guis or for administrative applications. A command method is identified by annotating it with a @Command annotation, and its parameters are exposed by annotating its parameters with either @Option or @Argument annotations which allow commands to be invoked by passing the arguments in a command line:

Command Annotations

Supported Types for Options, Arguments And Return values:

The following types are returned when describing the command usage. In Json they are represented as the name from the enumeration below. The expectation is that tools will use this options in forms. 

Command Invocation

Robin API

The command above can be invoked programmatically using a Robin Controller:

Robin Script

Robin Command Line Tool

Escaping

Commands are invoked on the server using a command line style interface in which parameters are passed to the command being executing as option or argument token separated by one or more whitespace characters. The rules for escaping are straightforward:

• To pass a string with whitespace as a single token it must be wrapped in quotes for example "My Text" so that the parser can tell that it is one argument rather than two arguments. 
  • Quotes within a quoted string must be escaped, so to represent an argument "My Text" with the surrounding quotes being passed in the parameter escaped quotes must be used: "\"My Text\""
• Because the command parser treats any token starting with '-' as an option negative leading dash characters must be escaped by prefixing them with a '\', for example \-3.1456.

The following simple command serves to demonstrate when escaping is necessary. This command prints a given line to either System.err or System.out:

Passing A String with Spaces 
 

The above will result in the following being printed to System.out in the App:

My String

Passing A String with Quotes 

Note that below we escape the quote characters within the quoted string:

All of the above will result in the following being printed to System.error in the App (with the quotes preserved). Not that in the java case that the extra escapes are needed to escape the '\' character. 

ERROR [0]: "My Error"

Passing Argument Starting With A Dash

Note that below we escape the quote characters within the quoted string:

All of the above will result in the following being printed to System.error in the App (with the quotes preserved)

ERROR[-10]: --BAD_TIMES--

Examples

A Fully Annotated Command

Usage as Printed By SrvMonUtil

testCommand
A command that exercises all of the invocation APIs
 Usage:
  testCommand -b -c -n -i -l -f -d -s -m -e <aByteArgument> <aCharArgument> <aShortArgument> <aIntArgument> <aLongArgument> <aFloatArgument> <aDoubleArgument> <aStringArgument> <aCurrencyArgument> <aEnumArgument> 
       <-b|--byteOption> <1|0,> Tests a byte Option default='0'
       <-c|--charOption> <a,|b|c> Tests a char Option default='b'
       <-n|--shortOption> <300|399,> Tests a short Option default='399'
       <-i|--intOption> <200000|20000,> Tests a int Option default='200000'
       <-l|--longOption> <100000000,|2000000000> Tests a long Option
           default='100000000'
       <-f|--floatOption> <0.0,|-2.0> Tests a float Option default='0.0'
       <-d|--doubleOption> <0.0,|1.2> Tests a double Option default='1.2'
       <-s|--stringOption> <Bar|Foo,> Tests a String Option default='Foo'
       <-m|--currencyOption> <JPY|USD,> Tests a Currency Option
           default='JPY'
       <-e|--enumOption> Tests a Enum Option default='PrettyPrint'
       [aByteArgument: <1|0,> Tests a byte Arguement default='0']
       [aCharArgument: <a,|b|c> Tests a char Arguement default='a']
       [aShortArgument: <300|399,> Tests a short Arguement default='300']
       [aIntArgument: <200000|20000,> Tests a int Arguement
           default='200000']
       [aLongArgument: <100000000,|2000000000> Tests a long Arguement
           default='100000000']
       [aFloatArgument: <0.0,|-2.01> Tests a float Arguement
           default='-2.01']
       [aDoubleArgument: <0.0,|1.2> Tests a double Arguement default='0.0']
       [aStringArgument: <Bar|Foo,> Tests a String Arguement default='Foo']
       [aCurrencyArgument: <JPY|USD,> Tests a Currency Arguement
           default='USD']
       [aEnumArgument: Tests a Enum Arguement default='Minimal']

Json Command Description: