stalker 0.2.0.b5

A Production Asset Management (ProdAM) System

About

Stalker is an Open Source Production Asset Management (ProdAM) System designed specifically for Animation and VFX Studios but can be used for any kind of projects. Stalker is licensed under LGPL v2.1.

Features:

• Designed for animation and vfx studios.

• It is a Pyramid Web Application and also SOM (Stalker Object Model) API can be used as a Python library.

• Platform independent.

• Default installation handles nearly all the asset and project management needs of an animation and vfx studio.

• Customizable with configuration scripts.

• Customizable object model (Stalker Object Model - SOM).

• Uses TaskJuggler as the project planing and tracking backend.

• Can be used with any kind of databases supported by SQLAlchemy.

• Can be connected to all the major 3d animation packages like Maya, Houdini, Nuke, XSI, Vue, Blender etc. and any application that has a Python API.

• Can work as a stand-alone application.

Stalker is build over these other OpenSource projects:

• Python

• Pyramid

• SQLAlchemy and Alembic

• Jinja2

• TaskJuggler

Source

The latest development version is available in Google Project page of Stalker or can be directly cloned with the following command if you already have mercurial installed:

hg clone https://stalker.googlecode.com/hg/ stalker

Stalker Changes

0.2.0.b5

• SOM:

  • New: Version class now has two new attributes called parent and children which will be used in tracking of the history of Version instances and track which Versions are derived from which Version.

  • New: Versions instances are now derived from Link class and not Entity.

  • Update: Added new revisions to alembic to reflect the change in Versions table.

  • Update: Links.path is renamed to Links.full_path and added three new attributes called path, filename and extension.

  • Update: Added new revisions to alembic to reflect the change in Links table.

  • New: Added a new class called LocalSession to store session data in users local filesystem. Though it is going to be replaced with some other system like Beaker.

  • Fix: Database part of Stalker can now be imported without depending to Pyramid.

0.2.0.b4

• WebUI:

  • Fix: Fixed the error in rendering of the home occurred when there is no user login information found in the request.

  • New: User thumbnails now can be changed.

  • New: Project thumbnails now can be changed.

  • New: content_list_projects now shows the project thumbnails.

  • New: content_list_users now shows the user thumbnails.

  • New: submitForm.js now enables all the disabled fields of the given form, and disables them back again upon error.

  • Fix: TagSelect.js will now correctly disable the child widgets if the disabled attribute is set to true.

  • New: Added fields javascript library which are a special group of input fields designed to be used with Stalker.

  • New: Added the first input field to stalker/fields, called tagField. It is now possible to add a TagSelect field which is correctly updated by only two lines of code.

  • New: Added get_tags() to stalker.views.__init__ module. Because all the tags now should be created with the tagField the way to retrieve tags is the same, so this helper function will let you retrieve tags from the given request instance.

  • Add: Permissions page is added to Group Page.

  • Fix: dgrid object is declared from [Grid, Selection, Keyboard]. So it’s possible to select a row and navigate by Keyboard.

  • Add: Permission controls are added to ‘Page’ and ‘List’ files.

  • Add: Permission controls are added to ‘Dialog’ and ‘Summary’ files.

0.2.0.b3

• SOM:

  • Update: FilenameTemplate’s are not strictly typed anymore.

  • Update: Removed the FilenameTemplate type initialization, FilenameTemplates do not depend on Types anymore.

  • Update: Added back the plural_class_name (previously plural_name) property to the ORMClass class, so all the classes in SOM now have this new property.

  • Update: Added accepts_references attribute to the EntityType class.

  • New: The Link class has a new attribute called original_filename to store the original file names of link files.

  • New: Added alembic to the project requirements.

  • New: Added alembic migrations which adds the accepts_references column to EntityTypes table and original_name to the Links table.

• WebUI:

  • Update: Updated to Dojo 1.9

  • Update: stalker.js is renamed to dialogs.js and it is now fully compatible with Dojo AMD.

  • Update: Merged StatusList create and update dialogs in to one.

  • Update: Content List - Task now checks user permissions to disable part of the UI.

  • Update: Added description field to the Summarize Task view.

  • Update: Added permission checks to several views.

  • Fix: Fixed fieldUpdater.js to work properly with Dojo 1.9 especially for MultiSelect widgets.

  • Fix: Separated the dialog and action routes for Structure.

  • Fix: Fixed unnecessary module imports in stalker.js.

  • Fix: Schedule button is now working properly.

  • Fix: Fixed Image Format creation.

  • Fix: Fixed Filename Template create dialog routine.

  • Fix: Fixed Filename Template update dialog routine.

  • Fix: Fixed entity_types in Filename Template creation UI.

  • Fix: Fixed Group update dialog, the permissions were not displayed and the name was not updated on the server side.

  • Fix: Fixed TaskBox CSS template

  • New: GanttChart now displays the finished/unfinished tasks with a green/red ‘id’ column.

  • Fix: Status color attribute converted from unicode to integer.

  • Fix: To destroy previous open dialog, same dialog id is given for create and update dialogs.

  • Update: In create/update_group dialog, to check all rows new checkboxes are added to head of each column.

  • Update: ComboBox is added to TagSelect widget as a new input widget type.

  • Update: Description field is added to Department dialog.

0.2.0.b2

• Stalker is now compatible with Python 2.6.

• SOM:

  • Task:

    • Update: Tasks now have a new attribute called watchers which holds a list of User instances watching the particular Task.

    • Update: Users now have a new attribute called watching which is a list of Task instances that this user is watching.

  • TimeLog:

    • Update: TimeLog instances will expand Task.schedule_timing value automatically if the total amount of logged time is more than the schedule_timing value.

    • Update: TimeLogs are now considered while scheduling the task.

    • Fix: TimeLogs raises OverBookedError when appending the same TimeLog instance to the same resource.

  • Auth:

    • Fix: The default ACLs for determining the permissions are now working properly.

• WebUI:

  • Fix: user_create_dialog now shows and updates groups.

  • Fix: Updating a project now correctly refreshes the project_summary content pane.

  • Fix: Separated the dialog and action routes for ImageFormat.

  • Fix: Separated the dialog and action routes for Asset.

  • Fix: Separated the dialog and action routes for Repository.

  • Fix: The working hours were not correctly passed to the studio instance in Studio creation.

  • Fix: “Append User Dialog” is now working properly.

  • Fix: Links between pages is created with redirectLink function which is written in base.jinja2. goToLink.js is deprecated, but still there are some codes that uses gotolink.js, they must be changed for next update.

  • Update: Combined user_create_dialog and user_update_dialog into one.

  • Update: Logged in work times will now be visible in gantt charts as a green bar in the TaskBar div.

  • Update: Department menus under ‘Crew’ menu are now showing the department users.

  • Update: Color choosers in “Create Status Dialog” now have colors picked by default for BG and FG colors.

  • Update: Replaced DataGrid objects with dgrid.

  • Update: Added navigation bar for assets, shots, sequences.

  • Update: Combined project_create_dialog and project_update_dialog into one.

  • Update: Merged the ‘Crew’ menu creation code in to one single teamMenuCreator.js, which is able to create menus for any groups and faux groups.

  • Update: All DataGrid field updated with dgrid class.

  • Add: Placeholder images added for user and department.

  • Add: Added update group dialog.

  • Change: Colors for the layouts are changed with MiamiNice PieChart’s color.

  • Add: Added update group dialog.

  • Add: Append department and append group pages has connected to database.

  • Add: Timelog List page added.

  • Add: New placeholders added for different type of object.

• jQueryGantt:

  • Update: Replaced the duration column with timing which correctly shows the schedule timing info of the related task.

  • Fix: The depends column shows the dependent task names correctly.

  • Update: jQueryGantt displays the owner Project of the Tasks as a container task.

  • Update: Added content link (this will be updated to support proper links, hardcoded links to be removed).

  • Update: Disabled drag and resize of TaskBar elements.

  • Update: Moved the resource link code to the JST template code instead of the Task class.

0.2.0.b1

• WorkingHours.is_working_hour() is working now.

• WorkingHours class is moved from stalker.models.project to stalker.models.studio module.

• daily_working_hours attribute is moved from stalker.models.project.Project to stalker.models.studio.Studio class.

• Repository path variables now ends with a forward slash even if it is not given.

• Updated Project classes validation messages to correlate with Stalker standard.

• Implementation of the Studio class is finished. The scheduling works like a charm.

• Added dialogCreator.js which helps creating a dialog without having a widget (Button or MenuItem) calling it and updated dialogCaller.js to use dialogCreator while creating a dialog.

• It is now possible to use any characters in SimpleEntity.name and the derived classes.

• jQueryGantt:

  • Fix; t is now possible to correctly move a TaskBar without getting in to an infinite loop which was freezing the browser.

  • The timing resolution of jQueryGantt is now 1 hour.

  • Fix; GanttMaster.task_ids were not properly cleaned in GanttMaster.reset(), resulting wrong links to be created.

  • Added a new zoom level where it is possible to see the every 1 hour of 1 day.

  • Colorized the Sunday column in suitable zoom levels. In upcoming releases it will use the stalker.models.studio.Studio.working_hours attribute to determine if the day/hour is an off day/hour.

  • Disabled editing of date fields.

  • Disabled undo/redo queue for performance test.

  • Fixed vertical overflow in gantt chart.

  • It is now possible to not to align a tasks start to its dependent tasks end.

• The Shot, Asset, Sequence detail pages under the Project Overview now opens inside the related tab on the Project Page.

• Booking class is renamed to TimeLog.

0.2.0.a10

• jQueryGantt:

  • jQueryGantt is now using the Task ids coming from Stalker instead of the ridiculous rowId.

  • Fixed a lot of issues related with the new data structure, it seems everything is working properly right now.

  • Parent Tasks displayed differently than the leaf tasks (on paar with the other gantt charts).

  • Gantt chart in User Detail page is now showing the parent tasks of the tasks of the user.

  • Now there are two different context menus for container/parent tasks and leaf tasks.

• Added new attribute to WorkingHours class called weekly_working_hours, which calculates the weekly working hours based on the working hours defined in the instance.

• Updated the Create Task Dialog to reflect the TaskJuggler integration.

• Task class now has a new attribute called schedule_timing which is replacing the effort, length and duration attributes. Together with the schedule_model attribute it will be used in scheduling the Task.

• Updated the config system to the one used in oyProjectManager (based on Sphinx config system). Now to reach the defaults:

  # instead of doing the following
  from stalker.conf import defaults # not valid anymore
  
  # use this
  from stalker import defaults

  If the above idiom is used, the old defaults module behaviour is retained, so no code change is required other than the new lower case config variable names.

0.2.0.a9

• A new property called to_tjp added to the SimpleEntity class which needs to be implemented in the child and is going to be used in TaskJuggler integration.

• A new attribute called is_scheduled added to Task class and it is going to be used in Gantt charts. Where it will lock the class and will not try to snap it to anywhere if it is scheduled.

• Changed the resolution attribute name to timing_resolution to comply with TaskJuggler.

• ScheduleMixin:

  • Updated ScheduleMixin class documentation.

  • There are two new read-only attributes called computed_start and computed_end. These attributes will be used in storing of the values calculated by TaskJuggler, and will be used in Gantt Charts if available.

  • Added computed_duration.

• Task:

  • Arranged the TaskJuggler workflow.

  • The task will use the effort > length > duration attributes in to_tjp property.

• Changed the license of Stalker from BSD-2 to LGPL 2.1. Any version previous to 0.2.0.a9 will be still BSD-2 and any version from and including 0.2.0.a9 will be distributed under LGPL 2.1 license.

• Added new types of classes called Schedulers which are going to be used in scheduling the tasks.

• Added TaskJugglerScheduler, it uses the given project and schedules its tasks.

0.2.0.a8

• TagSelect now can be filled by setting its value attribute (Ex: TagSelect.set(‘value’, data))

• Fixed Projects menu in base.jinja2, the link is now updating correctly when a new project is added.

• Added a new method called is_root to Task class. It is true for tasks where there are no parents.

• Added a new attribute called users to the Department class which is a synonym for the members attribute.

• Task:

  • Task class is now preventing one of the dependents to be set as the parent of a task.

  • Task class is now preventing one of the parents to be set as the one of the dependents of a task.

  • Fixed autoflush bugs in Task class.

• Fixed admin users department initialization.

• Added thumbnail attribute to the SimpleEntity class which is a reference to a Link instance, showing the path of the thumbnail.

• Fixed Circular Dependency bug in Task class, where a parent of a newly created task is depending to another task which is set as the dependee for this newly created task (T1 -> T3 -> T2 -> T1 (parent relation) -> T3 -> T2 etc.).

• jQueryGantt: Moving any child task will adjust the parent start and end dates so they fit to the children.

0.2.0.a7

• Changed these default setting value names to corresponding new names:

  • DEFAULT_TASK_DURATION -> TASK_DURATION

  • DEFAULT_TASK_PRIORITY -> TASK_PRIORITY

  • DEFAULT_VERSION_TAKE_NAME -> VERSION_TAKE_NAME

  • DEFAULT_TICKET_LABEL -> TICKET_LABEL

  • DEFAULT_ACTIONS -> ACTIONS

  • DEFAULT_BG_COLOR -> BG_COLOR

  • DEFAULT_FG_COLOR -> FG_COLOR

• stalker.conf.defaults:

  • Added default settings for project working hours (WORKING_HOURS, DAY_ORDER, DAILY_WORKING_HOURS)

  • Added a new variable for setting the task time resolution called TIME_RESOLUTION.

• stalker.models.project.Project:

  • Removed Project.project_tasks attribute, use Project.tasks directly to get all the Tasks in that project. For root task you can do a quick query:

    Task.query.filter(Task.project==proj_id).filter(Task.parent==None).all()

    This will also return the Assets, Sequences and Shots in that project, which are also Tasks.

  • Users are now assigned to Projects by appending them to the Project.users list. This is done in this way to allow a reduced list of resources to be shown in the Task creation dialogs.

  • Added a new helper class for Project working hour management, called WorkingHours.

  • Added a new attribute to Project class called working_hours which holds stalker.models.project.WorkingHours instances to manage the Project working hours. It will directly be passed to TaskJuggler.

• stalker.models.task.Task:

  • Removed the Task.task_of attribute, use Task.parent to get the owner of this Task.

  • Task now has two new attributes called Task.parent and Task.children which allow more complex Task-to-Task relation.

  • Secondary table name for holding Task to Task dependency relation is renamed from Task_Tasks to Task_Dependencies.

  • check_circular_dependency function is now accepting a third argument which is the name of the attribute to be investigated for circular relationship. It is done in that way to be able to use the same function in searching for circular relations both in parent/child and depender/dependee relations.

• ScheduleMixin:

  • Added a new attribute to ScheduleMixin for time resolution adjustment. Default value is 1 hour and can be set with stalker.conf.defaults.TIME_RESOLUTION. Any finer time than the resolution is rounded to the closest multiply of the resolution. It is possible to set it from microseconds to years. Although 1 hour is a very reasonable resolution which is also the default resolution for TaskJuggler.

  • ScheduleMixin now uses datetime.datetime for the start and end attributes.

  • Renamed the start_date attribute to start.

  • Renamed the end_date attribute to end

• Removed the TaskableEntity.

• Asset, Sequence and Shot classes are now derived from Task class allowing more complex Task relation combined with the new parent/child relation of Tasks. Use Asset.children or Asset.tasks to reach the child tasks of that asset (same with Sequence and Shot classes).

• stalker.models.shot.Shot:

  • Removed the sequence and introduced sequences attribute in Shot class. Now one shot can be in more than one Sequence. Allowing more complex Shot/Sequence relations..

  • Shots can now be created without a Sequence instance. The sequence attribute is just used to group the Shots.

  • Shots now have a new attribute called scenes, holding Scene instances. It is created to group same shots occurring in the same scenes.

• In tests all the Warnings are now properly handled as Warnings.

• stalker.models.ticket.Ticket:

  • Ticket instances are now tied to Projects and it is now possible to create Tickets without supplying a Version. They are free now.

  • It is now possible to link any SimpleEntity to a Ticket.

  • The Ticket Workflow is now fully customizable. Use stalker.conf.defaults.TICKET_WORKFLOW dictionary to define the workflow and stalker.conf.defaults.TICKET_STATUS_ORDER for the order of the ticket statuses.

• Added a new class called Scene to manage Shots with another property.

• Removed the output_path attribute in FilenameTemplate class.

• Grouped the templates for each entity under a directory with the entity name.

• Converted the view.py to a python module and put the views for each entity to its own python file.

0.2.0.a6

• Added a new Dojo Widget called Tag to help the creation of the tags in the TagSelect.

• Users now can have more than one Department.

• Updated java scripts to be required in Dojo AMD way.

• Updated setup.py to include “pyramid_jinja2”

• User instances now have two new properties for getting the user tickets (User.tickets) and the open tickets (User.open_tickets).

• New shortcut Task.project returns the Task.task_of.project value.

• Added ‘PlaceHolder’ property for ‘FilterSelect Widgets’. And ‘Label’ property is used in construction of ‘PlaceHolder’ property.

• Set disabled prerequisite fields, until their prerequisite is selected.

• Added ‘StartDate’, ‘EndDate’ and ‘Duration’ field to add_project page. ‘StartDate’, ‘EndDate’ properties are written on database.

• jQueryGannt:

  • Gannt view is now communicating with Stalker correctly. The only left issue is the end date value is not properly shown in the gannt view.

  • Updated the jQueryGannt css’s to work with Stalker and Dojo.

• Project page is redesigned. SplitContainer is removed. All contents are displayed in TabContainer. New Contents in TabContainer are:

  • ProjectName (Disabled Field - Used for displaying projectname.)

  • Overview (It has InlineEditable fields. Although they are not connected to DB.)

• Shot and Asset creation dialogs now automatically updated with the given Project instance info.

• User overview page is now reflection the new design.

0.2.0.a5

• The code attribute of the SimpleEntity is now introduced as a separate mixin. To let it be used by the classes it is really needed.

• The query method is now converted to a property so it is now possible to use it like a property as in the SQLAlchemy.orm.Session as shown below:

  from stalker import Project
  Project.query.all() # instead of Project.query().all()

• ScheduleMixin.due_date is renamed to ScheduleMixin.end_date.

• Added a new class attribute to SimpleEntity called __auto_name__ which controls the naming of the instances and instances derived from SimpleEntity. If __auto_name__ is set to True the name attribute of the instance will be automatically generated and it will have the following format:

  {{ClassName}}_{{UUID4}}

  Here are a couple of naming examples:

  Ticket_74bb46b0-29de-4f3e-b4e6-8bcf6aed352d
  Version_2fa5749e-8cdb-4887-aef2-6d8cec6a4faa

• Fixed an autoflush issue with SQLAlchemy in StatusList class. Now the status column is again not nullable in StatusMixin.

• The WebUI form fields are now refreshed with newly added data.

• Added a new Dojo widget called TagSelect. Which is basically a widget for adding Tag style widgets.

0.2.0.a4

• Added a new class called EntityType to hold all the available class names and capabilities.

• Version class now has a new attribute called inputs to hold the inputs of the current Version instance. It is a list of Link instances.

• FilenameTemplate classes path and filename attributes are no more converted to string, so given a non string value will raise TypeError.

• Structure.custom_template now only accepts strings and None, setting it to anything else will raise a TypeError.

• Two Type’s for FilenameTemplate’s are created by default when initializing the database, first is called “Version” and it is used to define FilenameTemplates which are used for placing Version source files. The second one is called “Reference” and it is used when injecting references to a given class. Along with the FilenameTemplate.target_entity_type this will allow one to create two different FilenameTemplates for one class:

  # first get the Types
  vers_type = Type.query()\
              .filter_by(target_entity_type="FilenameTemplate")\
              .filter_by(type="Version")\
              .first()
  
  ref_type = Type.query()\
             .filter_by(target_entity_type="FilenameTemplate")\
             .filter_by(type="Reference")\
             .first()
  
  # lets create a FilenameTemplate for placing Asset Version files.
  f_ver = FilenameTemplate(
      target_entity_type="Asset",
      type=vers_type,
      path="Assets/{{asset.type.code}}/{{asset.code}}/{{task.type.code}}",
      filename="{{asset.code}}_{{version.take_name}}_{{task.type.code}}_v{{'%03d'|version.version_number}}{{link.extension}}"
      output_path="{{version.path}}/Outputs/{{version.take_name}}"
  )
  
  # and now define a FilenameTemplate for placing Asset Reference files.
  # no need to have an output_path here...
  f_ref = FilenameTemplate(
      target_entity_type="Asset",
      type=ref_type,
      path="Assets/{{asset.type.code}}/{{asset.code}}/References",
      filename="{{link.type.code}}/{{link.id}}{{link.extension}}"
  )

• stalker.db.register() now accepts only real classes instead of class names. This way it can store more information about classes.

• Status.bg_color and Status.fg_color attributes are now simple integers. And the Color class is removed.

• StatusMixin.status is now a ForeignKey to a the Statuses table, thus it is a real Status instance instead of an integer showing the index of the Status in the related StatusList. This way the Status of the object will not change if the content of the StatusList is changed.

• Added new attribute Project.project_tasks which holds all the direct or indirect Tasks created for that project.

• User.login_name is renamed to User.login.

• Removed the first_name, last_name and initials attributes from User class. Now the name and code attributes are going to be used, thus the name attribute is no more the equivalent of login and the code attribute is doing what was initials doing previously.

0.2.0.a3

• Status class now has two new attributes bg_color and fg_color to hold the UI colors of the Status instance. The colors are Color instances.

0.2.0.a2

• SimpleEntity now has an attribute called generic_data which can hold any kind of SOM object inside and it is a list.

• Changed the formatting rules for the name in SimpleEntity class, now it can start with a number, and it is not allowed to have multiple whitespace characters following each other.

• The source attribute in Version is renamed to source_file.

• The version attribute in Version is renamed to version_number.

• The take attribute in Version is renamed to take_name.

• The version_number in Version is now generated automatically if it is skipped or given as None or it is too low where there is already a version number for the same Version series (means attached to the same Task and has the same take_name.

• Moved the User class to stalker.models.auth module.

• Removed the stalker.ext.auth module because it is not necessary anymore. Thus the User now handles all the password conversions by itself.

• PermissionGroup is renamed back to Group again to match with the general naming of the authorization concept.

• Created two new classes for the Authorization system, first one is called Permission and the second one is a Mixin which is called ACLMixin which adds ACLs to the mixed in class. For now, only the User and Group classes are mixed with this mixin by default.

• The declarative Base class of SQLAlchemy is now created by binding it to a ORMClass (a random name) which lets all the derived class to have a method called query which will bypass the need of calling DBSession.query(class_) but instead just call class_.query():

  from stalker.models.auth import User
  user_1 = User.query().filter_by(name='a user name').first()

0.2.0.a1

• Converted the whole system to a Pyramid Web application. If the previous implementations investigated, it will be understood that it was only the database model of a Web Application.

• Changed the db.setup arguments. It is now accepting a dictionary instead of just a string to comply with the SQLAlchemy scaffold and this dictionary should contain keys for the SQLAlchemy engine setup. There is another utility that comes with Pyramid to setup the database under the scripts folder, it is also working without any problem with stalker.db.

• The session variable is renamed to DBSession and is now a scopped session, so there is no need to use DBSession.commit it will be handled by the system it self.

• Even though the DBSession is using the Zope Transaction Manager extension normally, in the database tests no extension is used because the transaction manager was swallowing all errors and it was a little weird to try to catch this errors out of the with block.

• Refactored the code, all the models are now in separate python files, but can be directly imported from the main stalker module as shown:

  from stalker import User, Department, Task

  By using this kind of organization, both development and usage will be eased out.

• task_of now only accepts TaskableEntity instances.

• Updated the examples. It is now showing how to extend SOM correctly.

• Updated the references to the SOM classes in docstrings and rst files.

• Removed the Review class. And introduced the much handier Ticket class. Now reviewing a data is the process of creating Ticket’s to that data.

• The database is now initialized with a StatusList and a couple of Statuses appropriate for Ticket instances.

• The database is now initialized with two Type instances (‘Enhancement’ and ‘Defect’) suitable for Ticket instances.

• StatusMixin now stores the status attribute as an Integer showing the index of the Status in the status_list attribute but when asked for the value of StatusMixin.status attribute it will return a proper Status instance and the attribute can be set with an integer or with a proper Status instance.