wimgielis.com

Indenting TI processes

• Apr. 05, 2010

Introduction

[rant mode=ON]

A longstanding cause of annoyance among TM1 developers and admins, is that the Turbo Integrator interface is euhm… archaic. It is not the flexible, good-looking editor one might/can expect nowadays.

[rant mode=OFF]

How about writing a bit of code ourselves for basic functionalities? I know that there is a goodlooking TI editor, but it is not part of TM1 and it is not priceless.

If you follow along this article and the code therein, you will learn…:

• how to use TI to execute VBScript files
• that you can specify parameters to the VBS
• some nice tricks to speed up code execution and write less code

In the end, a few lines of code will indent your full TI process!

Turbo Integrator will help us

Create a new process and give it a meaningful name. Add 2 parameters:

Add this bit of code to the Advanced > Prolog tab of the process:

# Wim Gielis
# https://www.wimgielis.com
#####
# Indenting the code of a TI process
# 05/04/10
#####
IF(FILEEXISTS(pProcessName | '.pro')=1);

     EXECUTECOMMAND('cscript indenting.vbs "' | pProcessName | '"' | NUMBERTOSTRING(pSpaces),1);

ENDIF;

Wait! Save this process but do not execute this yet since we are still missing the vbs file. Create a text file called indenting.vbs in your TM1 Database directory. It could also be elsewhere but then you need to go adding (hard-coded) path locations. These are the contents for the vbs file:

' Wim Gielis
' https://www.wimgielis.com
'''''
' Custom VBScript code to indent TI process code
' 05/04/10
'''''
'add extra constructs where you want to increase
'or decrease indentation. Separate with #'s.
Const sIndentingBegin = "#IF#WHILE#"
Const sIndentingEnd = "#ENDIF;#END;#"

Dim sTrimmedLine, iIndent, ArgObj, c0
Set ArgObj = WScript.Arguments
Set c0 = CreateObject("scripting.filesystemobject")

'read in the original process code
sq = Split(c0.OpenTextfile(ArgObj(0) & ".pro").ReadAll, vbCrLf)

'revise the process code
For l = 0 To UBound(sq)

   sTrimmedLine = Trim(sq(l))

   If Left(sTrimmedLine,2) & "^" & Right(sTrimmedLine,6) <> "IF^ENDIF;" Then
          If InStr(sIndentingEnd, "#" & sTrimmedLine & "#") Then
            iIndent = iIndent - 1
          End If
   End If

   sq(l) = Space(ArgObj(1) * iIndent) & sTrimmedLine

   If Left(sTrimmedLine,2) & "^" & Right(sTrimmedLine,6) <> "IF^ENDIF;" Then
          If InStr(sIndentingBegin, "#" & Split(sTrimmedLine & "(", "(")(0) & "#") Then
               iIndent = iIndent + 1
          End If
   End If

Next

'output the revised process code
c0.CreateTextfile(ArgObj(0) & "_Indented.pro").Write Join(sq, vbCrLf)

Important remarks

• The VBScript code creates a file with the same name as the TI process, but appends the word ‘_Indented’ to it. The code will overwrite a file if it already exists.
• You can now copy-paste the indented code in you own TI process. Alternatively, stop the TM1 service of your TM1 Server, rename files, and start the service again.
• As mentioned in the commentary lines, you can add more functions where you want to indent. See on top of the code.
• ArgObj is used to ask what parameters we supplied to the VBS file.

Have fun with this code!

• « Previous TM1 article
• Next TM1 article »