Issue
I built a GUI in JavaFX with FXML for running a bunch of different Python scripts. The Python scripts continuously collect data from a device and print it to the console as it's collected in a loop at anywhere from around 10 to 70 Hz depending on which script was being run, and they don't stop on their own.
I want the end-user to be able to click a button on my GUI which launches the scripts and lets them see the output. Currently, the best I have done was using Runtime.exec() with the command "cmd /c start cmd /k python some_script.py" which opens the windows command prompt, runs python some_script.py in it, and keeps the command prompt open so that you can see the output. The problem with this is that it only works on Windows (my OS) but I need to have universal OS support and that it relies on Java starting an external program which I hear is not very elegant.
I then tried to remedy this by executing the python some_script.py command in Java, capturing the process output with BufferedReader, creating a new JavaFX scene with just a TextArea in an AnchorPane to be a psuedo-Java-console and then calling .setText() on that TextArea to put the script output in it.
This kinda worked, but I ran into many problems in that the writing to the JavaFX console would jump in big chunks of several dozens of lines instead of writing to it line by line as the Python code was making Print() calls. Also, I got a bunch of NullPointerException and ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException somewhat randomly in that Java would write a couple of hundred lines correctly but then throw those errors and freeze the program. I'm pretty sure both of these issues were due to having so much data at such high data rates which overflowed the BufferedReader buffer and/or the TextArea.setText() cache or something similar.
What I want to know is what approach I should take at this. I cannot migrate the Python code to Java since it relies on someone else's Python library to collect its data. Should I try to keep with the pseudo-Java-console idea and see if I can make that work? Should I go back to opening a command prompt window from Java and running the Python scripts and then add support for doing the same with Terminal in Mac and Linux? Is there a better approach I haven't thought of? Is the idea of having Java code call Python code and handle its output just disgusting and a horrible idea?
Please let me know if you would like to see any code (there is quite a lot) or if I can clarify anything, and I will try my best to respond quickly. Thank you!
Solution
My solution was to still call the Python code from the Java Processbuilder, but use the -u option like python -u scriptname.py to specify unbuffered Python output.
Answered By - Gabe Mukobi
Answer Checked By - Willingham (JavaFixing Volunteer)
