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Build a Custom Jaseci Action Module

In this tutorial, you are going to learn how to build a custom jaseci module with python. In this application I will teach you how to create a basic calculator module for jaseci.

Preparation​

Let's start by creating a folder called calculator in your root directory of your application. After creating the folder let's create a file name calculator.py inside of the calculator folder.

Note

We are using python to create the custom jaseci module so you will need .py files and not jac.

After creating the file, open the file in a code editor and let's start coding our module.

from jaseci.jsorc.live_actions import jaseci_action

First, we will have to import jaseci_actions to the calculator.py file. We will be using jaseci actions to load the module into jaseci.

@jaseci_action(act_group=["calculator"], allow_remote=True)

In this block:

  • act_group is the name of the action module.
  • allow_remote indicates whether you want this action to be able to run remotely or not.

We will be adding onto the file.

@jaseci_action(act_group=["calculator"], allow_remote=True)
def add(first_number: int, second_number: int):
    return first_number + second_number

What this functions does, it adds the two numbers from the parameter and returns the sum of each number.

Note

Practice adding data type to the parameters for e.g. first_number: int because jaseci_actions use this as validation, remotely and also through the jaseci application.

Loading the custom module​

There are currently two ways to load a custom action module into your jac program:

  • directly loading from the python source code (load local)
  • host the action as a running microservice (load remote)

In this section we will walk through each of the methods.

Load local​

jsctl
jaseci > actions load local calculator/calculator.py

In this case, we are loading the module directly from its source code python file with actions load local, followed by the filepath

{
  "success": true
}

You should see this after running the command. If you see this you have successfully build and load a custom jaseci module.

Load remote​

Alternatively, we can first launch the custom module as a standalone service

uvicorn calculator:serv_actions

Note

calculator is the module name and serv_actions will allow you to run all functions remotely at one time. Run this inside the calculator.py directory.

You should an output similar to the one below:

WARNING:  ASGI app factory detected. Using it, but please consider setting the --factory flag explicitly.
INFO:     Started server process [5514]
INFO:     Waiting for application startup.
INFO:     Application startup complete.
INFO:     Uvicorn running on http://127.0.0.1:8000 (Press CTRL+C to quit)

Go to http://localhost:8000/docs and you should see a documentation page that looks like this

This is an automatically generated documentation page for the custom module you have just created. It lists all custom actions, e.g. the add one we created just now. You can also use this docs page to do quick testing of each action by expanding on that action and then click on Try it out in the top-right corner.

Use the custom module in a Jac program​

Now we have the actions loaded, let's create a simple jac program to utilize it.

Create a file name main.jac and add the following code.

walker init {
    can calculator.add;
    report calculator.add(1,1);
}

The can keyword is used to declare any custom actions needed for the walker. In this case,

can calculator.add;

enables the use of the add action from the calculator action module.

Note

Remember the act_group parameter used in the @jaseci_action decorator earlier? That sepcifies the name of the action module and the same name needs to be used here in the can statement. The actual name of the python file itself is only relevant when using actions load local and does not need to be the same as act_group.

report calculator.add(1,1); then reports the result.

Run the walker with

jaseci > jac run main.jac

You should see an output similar to the one below.

{
  "success": true,
  "report": [
    2
  ],
  "final_node": "urn:uuid:04e97f70-26b3-467e-a291-bd03b18e7a6d",
  "yielded": false
}