Programmatic access to information

[opk12]

What about a central place of discussion about the changes that involve at least these (what else?)

1. getting the homeserver's verbatim output (follows the Client-Server API spec)
2. getting custom output (only the fields of interest to the client)
3. getting machine-readable output
4. calling from Python code

So this issue covers at least these (what else?)

• Enhancement: print the source event, output data or event in JSON instead of plain text format #92
• Question: How would I go about saving the output from --joined-rooms and/or --joined-members to json format? #95
• ...

[opk12]

What about exporting some specific functions from matrix_commander and moving CLI handling into cli.py. So one can do this

rooms: Iterable[str] = matrix_commander.get_joined_rooms(room_id=...))
json.dumps(rooms)

[8go]

Thanks @opk12 for raising the awareness for these issues.

First question: Bullet 1 vs Bullet 3: Are there cases where the homeserver's verbatim output is not machine-readable output?

In other words, if bullet 1 is taken care of, then bullet 3 is automatically resolved as well?

[opk12]

No / Yes, even in future spec versions, otherwise one could not make a client software.

[opk12]

The pro of the matrix-nio API is that it mirrors the Client-Server spec'ed workflow. The con is that each user must learn the C-S spec and reimplement the same patterns.

De facto, matrix-commander is a public repository of shared patterns / recipes around matrix-nio. It is even promoted as usage example in a dedicated section in the matrix-nio docs (link). But the CLI models the most common end-user use cases.

I think about a mixed approach: when the spec advances (leaving m-c behind), the use-case is custom, the CLI does not exist, ... then I implement the parts of the spec of my interest, and leave everything else to m-c (reusing m-c as a simple wrapper around matrix-nio). I can safely intermix calling the m-c CLI, calling the m-c functions and classes, parsing the homeserver's output downloaded by m-c.

That's why I used very abstract words output, information, even though the issues open today mention JSON room events.

The feature to send custom JSON events (already implemented) fits as part of this view.

[opk12]

Notably, it would be cool if m-c exposed the AsyncClient so that I can manipulate it directly.