Scripts

Utility scripts for maintaining the PickNik website, in particular the Behaviors Hub.

How to update the Behavior Hub data source

These steps allow you to get the updated behaviors.xml, which should happen every release.

# In moveitpro repo when your REST API is running, get the generated XML data
curl -X GET http://localhost:3200/behaviors/data > behaviors_raw.xml

enrich_behaviors_with_usage.py

Enhances behaviors_raw.xml with usage information (Metadata fields with used_in attribute) showing which Objectives use each behavior.

Run this script from the PickNik website repository and point --workspace at your moveit_pro_example_ws checkout.

Prerequisites

Save behaviors_raw.xml (downloaded from REST API) somewhere accessible from this repository, for example /tmp/behaviors_raw.xml or this repository’s scripts/ directory.

Usage

# From the PickNik website repository root
python3 scripts/enrich_behaviors_with_usage.py --xml scripts/behaviors_raw.xml --workspace /path/to/moveit_pro_example_ws --output scripts/behaviors_with_usage.xml

# Example using temporary files outside the repository
python3 scripts/enrich_behaviors_with_usage.py --xml /tmp/behaviors_raw.xml --workspace /path/to/moveit_pro_example_ws --output /tmp/behaviors_with_usage.xml

What it does

Discovers all robot configs in the workspace
Extracts which Objectives use which behaviors by parsing Objective XML files
Preserves all existing XML data (ports, metadata, etc.)
Adds Metadata elements with used_in attribute to each behavior’s MetadataFields showing:
- Which configs use the behavior
- Which Objectives use the behavior
- The file path of each Objective
- The usage type (Action, Control, Decorator, SubTree)
The used_in attribute contains a JSON array of usage objects
Outputs enhanced XML file ready for conversion to JSON

Requirements

Python 3
PyYAML (pip install pyyaml)
behaviors_raw.xml file (from REST API endpoint)
moveit_pro_example_ws workspace with robot configs

update_behaviors_from_xml.py

Updates _data/behaviors.json with port information and metadata extracted from behaviors_with_usage.xml.

Run this script in the PickNik website repository.

Usage

# From project root
python scripts/update_behaviors_from_xml.py [path_to_behaviors_with_usage.xml]

# Example with default path
python scripts/update_behaviors_from_xml.py

# Example with custom XML path
python scripts/update_behaviors_from_xml.py /path/to/behaviors_with_usage.xml

What it does

Extracts port information (input, output, input/output) from XML Action and SubTree elements
Extracts metadata (subcategory, description, deprecated status)
Extracts used_in information from Metadata elements with used_in attribute (if present)
Updates existing behaviors in JSON or adds new ones
Preserves existing data like links and other fields
Updates the export date

Complete Workflow

# 1. In moveitpro repo - Get behaviors.xml from REST API and save it somewhere accessible
curl -X GET http://localhost:3200/behaviors/data > /tmp/behaviors_raw.xml

# 2. In the PickNik website repo - Enhance XML with usage information from moveit_pro_example_ws
python3 scripts/enrich_behaviors_with_usage.py --xml /tmp/behaviors_raw.xml --workspace /path/to/moveit_pro_example_ws --output /tmp/behaviors_with_usage.xml

# 3. In PickNik website repo - Convert to JSON
python scripts/update_behaviors_from_xml.py /tmp/behaviors_with_usage.xml

Since 2015, PickNik has developed our production-grade MoveIt Pro platform to propel the robotics industry forward, while also contributing back to ROS™, MoveIt, and many other open source projects.

Scripts

How to update the Behavior Hub data source

enrich_behaviors_with_usage.py

Prerequisites

Usage

What it does

Requirements

update_behaviors_from_xml.py

Usage

What it does

Complete Workflow

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