FileOutputWindow

VTKEx/Cxx/Utilities/FileOutputWindow

Description

This example shows how to pipe error output to a text file instead of the usual vtk pop-up window.

Question

If you have a simple question about this example contact us at VTKExProject If your question is more complex and may require extended discussion, please use the VTK Discourse Forum

Code

FileOutputWindow.cxx

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

int main(int, char *[])
{
  vtkSmartPointer<vtkFileOutputWindow> fileOutputWindow = 
      vtkSmartPointer<vtkFileOutputWindow>::New();
  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
  vtkSmartPointer<vtkXMLPolyDataReader> reader = 
      vtkSmartPointer<vtkXMLPolyDataReader>::New();
  reader->Update();

  return EXIT_SUCCESS;
}

CMakeLists.txt

cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.3 FATAL_ERROR)

project(FileOutputWindow)

find_package(VTK COMPONENTS 
  vtkvtkCommonCore
  vtkvtkIOXML QUIET)
if (NOT VTK_FOUND)
  message("Skipping FileOutputWindow: ${VTK_NOT_FOUND_MESSAGE}")
  return ()
endif()
message (STATUS "VTK_VERSION: ${VTK_VERSION}")
if (VTK_VERSION VERSION_LESS "8.90.0")
  # old system
  include(${VTK_USE_FILE})
  add_executable(FileOutputWindow MACOSX_BUNDLE FileOutputWindow.cxx )
  target_link_libraries(FileOutputWindow PRIVATE ${VTK_LIBRARIES})
else ()
  # include all components
  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}
    )
endif ()

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.