[Py4j-users] General Question P4J

[Bourassa, M. <Mik...@dr...>]

Hi there.  I'm Mike Bourassa.  I have a question about whether P4J has a
functionality I'm seeking.

 

I have been working with Netlogo (http://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo/),
an agent development environment.  While it is a very nice system, I
have reached a stage where I would like to do some more exotic agent
behaviour.  While Netlogo is easy to program in, I need to use more
complex algorithms that exist in libraries for Java, Python, etc.
Netlogo allows me to write extensions; essentially I write a program,
create a .jar, and Netlogo can call the contents of the .jar.

 

In my current set-up, each agent in Netlogo at some point calls the
extension .jar.  The .jar contains methods that provide decision making
for the agents; state data goes in, a decision comes out.  The problem
is every time I change the decision making algorithm I have to: shut
down Netlogo, alter program, create .jar, restart Netlogo.  So I
thought, what if the extension just holds the state data and returns a
decision, while I use a Python program to do the decision making.  That
is, the .jar extension would hold the state data and using P4J, a Python
program would access the data and return a decision which the extension
would then pass back to Netlogo.  The advantage would be that I could
alter the Python program without having to recreate a .jar and shutdown
Netlogo every time.

 

So: does that make any sense and could P4J help me achieve my goal?
Thanks in advance for any assistance.

 

Mike Bourassa



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