The BSDF Command Line Interface

BSDF has a command line interface (CLI) for performing simple tasks, such as inspecting, converting and creating BSDF files. The CLI is part of the Python implementation, so pip install bsdf to start using it.

Using the CLI

After installation, depending on your Python setup, the CLI may be available as the bsdf command. If this is the case, you can run:

$ bsdf ...

If this is not the case, or if you want to target a specific Python version, use:

$ python -m bsdf ...

Getting help

To get started, run the help command:

$ bsdf help

which yields:

Command line interface for the Binary Structured Data Format.
See http://bsdf.io for more information on BSDF.

usage: bsdf command [options]

Available commands:
  convert - Convert one format into another (e.g. JSON to BSDF).
  create  - Create a BSDF file from data obtained by evaluation Python code.
  help    - Show the help text.
  info    - Print meta information about the given BSDF file.
  version - Print the version of the current Python implementation.
  view    - View the content of a given BSDF file.

Run 'bsdf help command' or 'bsdf command --help' to learn more.

Dive deeper using e.g.

$ bsdf help view

Example

$ bsdf create foo.bsdf '["xx", 4, None, [3, 4, 5]*3]'

$ bsdf info foo.bsdf
BSDF info for: C:\dev\pylib\bsdf\python\foo.bsdf
  file_name:     foo.bsdf
  file_size:     45
  file_mtime:    2017-12-21 15:21:41
  is_valid:      true
  file_version:  2.1

$ bsdf view foo.bsdf
[ list with 4 elements
  'xx'
  4
  null
  [ list with 9 elements
    3
    4
    5
    3
    4
    5
    3
    4
    5
  ]
]

$ bsdf view foo.bsdf --depth=1
[ list with 4 elements
  'xx'
  4
  null
  [ list with 9 elements ]
]