FileOutputWindow

Description¶

This example shows how to pipe error output to a text file instead of the usual vtk pop-up window. The output will also be written to the console.

Other languages

See (PythonicAPI)

Question

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Code¶

FileOutputWindow.cxx

#include <vtkFileOutputWindow.h>
#include <vtkNew.h>
#include <vtkXMLPolyDataReader.h>

int main(int, char*[])
{
  vtkNew<vtkFileOutputWindow> fileOutputWindow;
  fileOutputWindow->SetFileName("output.txt");

  // Note that the SetInstance function is a static member of vtkOutputWindow.
  vtkOutputWindow::SetInstance(fileOutputWindow);

  // This causes an error intentionally (file name not specified) - this error
  // will be written to the file output.txt
  vtkNew<vtkXMLPolyDataReader> reader;
  reader->Update();

  return EXIT_SUCCESS;
}

CMakeLists.txt¶

cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.12 FATAL_ERROR)

project(FileOutputWindow)

find_package(VTK COMPONENTS 
  CommonCore
  IOXML
)

if (NOT VTK_FOUND)
  message(FATAL_ERROR "FileOutputWindow: Unable to find the VTK build folder.")
endif()

# Prevent a "command line is too long" failure in Windows.
set(CMAKE_NINJA_FORCE_RESPONSE_FILE "ON" CACHE BOOL "Force Ninja to use response files.")
add_executable(FileOutputWindow MACOSX_BUNDLE FileOutputWindow.cxx )
  target_link_libraries(FileOutputWindow PRIVATE ${VTK_LIBRARIES}
)
# vtk_module_autoinit is needed
vtk_module_autoinit(
  TARGETS FileOutputWindow
  MODULES ${VTK_LIBRARIES}
)

Download and Build FileOutputWindow¶

Click here to download FileOutputWindow and its CMakeLists.txt file. Once the tarball FileOutputWindow.tar has been downloaded and extracted,

cd FileOutputWindow/build

If VTK is installed:

cmake ..

If VTK is not installed but compiled on your system, you will need to specify the path to your VTK build:

cmake -DVTK_DIR:PATH=/home/me/vtk_build ..

Build the project:

make

and run it:

./FileOutputWindow

WINDOWS USERS

Be sure to add the VTK bin directory to your path. This will resolve the VTK dll's at run time.