VTK/Examples/Cxx/InfoVis/DelimitedTextWriter

Is the output of

"","",""
0,1,2
3,4,5
6,7,8

expected? What is the first line indicating? Simply that there are 3 string fields?

With my prior edit, the first line is now "column-0","column-1","column-2" -- the first line is the names of the column arrays in the table. I added them to the example because the example was crashing on Windows builds, where streaming a NULL char* is no bueno. (David Cole)

DelimitedTextWriter.cxx

 #include <vtkVersion.h>

#include <vtkSmartPointer.h>
#include <vtkPolyData.h>
#include <vtkDelimitedTextWriter.h>
#include <vtkSphereSource.h>
#include <vtkVariantArray.h>
#include <vtkTable.h>

#include <sstream>
#include <string>

int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
  std::string outputFilename = "output.txt";

  // Use the specified filename if it is provided
  if(argc == 2)
    {
    outputFilename = argv[1];
    }
 
  // Construct an empty table
  vtkSmartPointer<vtkTable> table = 
    vtkSmartPointer<vtkTable>::New();
 
  for(unsigned int i = 0; i < 3; i++)
    {
    vtkSmartPointer<vtkVariantArray> col = 
      vtkSmartPointer<vtkVariantArray>::New();

    std::ostringstream oss;
    oss << "column-" << i;
    std::string colName = oss.str();
    col->SetName(colName.c_str());

    col->InsertNextValue ( vtkVariant ( 0.0 ) );
    col->InsertNextValue ( vtkVariant ( 0.0 ) );
    col->InsertNextValue ( vtkVariant ( 0.0 ) );
    table->AddColumn ( col );
    }
 
  // Fill the table with values
  unsigned int counter = 0;
  for(vtkIdType r = 0; r < table->GetNumberOfRows(); r++ )
    {
    for(vtkIdType c = 0; c < table->GetNumberOfColumns(); c++ )
      {
      table->SetValue ( r,c, vtkVariant ( counter ) );
      counter++;
      }
    }
    
  vtkSmartPointer<vtkDelimitedTextWriter> writer = 
    vtkSmartPointer<vtkDelimitedTextWriter>::New();
  writer->SetFileName(outputFilename.c_str());
#if VTK_MAJOR_VERSION <= 5
  writer->SetInputConnection(table->GetProducerPort());
#else
  writer->SetInputData(table);
#endif
  writer->Write();

  return EXIT_SUCCESS;
}

Please try the new VTKExamples website.

CMakeLists.txt

cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 2.8)

PROJECT(DelimitedTextWriter)

find_package(VTK REQUIRED)
include(${VTK_USE_FILE})

add_executable(DelimitedTextWriter MACOSX_BUNDLE DelimitedTextWriter.cxx)

if(VTK_LIBRARIES)
  target_link_libraries(DelimitedTextWriter ${VTK_LIBRARIES})
else()
  target_link_libraries(DelimitedTextWriter vtkHybrid vtkWidgets)
endif()

Download and Build DelimitedTextWriter

Click here to download DelimitedTextWriter. and its CMakeLists.txt file.

Once the tarball DelimitedTextWriter.tar has been downloaded and extracted,

cd DelimitedTextWriter/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:

./DelimitedTextWriter

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