VTK/Java Wrapping

Configuration

You basically just need to turn VTK_WRAP_JAVA on in CMake and build.

Bartlomiej Wilkowski has created a nice tutorial of configuring Java wrapping with VTK.

Mac (Snow Leopard)

To build a sample application provided in VTK against your VTK build directory (with an installed VTK replace "bin" with "lib"):

$ export DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH=$DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH:your_vtk_build_dir/bin
$ javac -cp your_vtk_build_dir/bin/vtk.jar your_vtk_source_dir/Wrapping/Java/vtk/sample/Demo.java
$ java -cp your_vtk_build_dir/bin/vtk.jar:your_vtk_source_dir/Wrapping/Java vtk.sample.Demo

Usage

/**
 * An application that displays a 3D cone. The button allow to close the
 * application
 */
public class SimpleVTK extends JPanel implements ActionListener {
    private static final long serialVersionUID = 1L;
    private vtkPanel renWin;
    private JButton exitButton;

    // -----------------------------------------------------------------
    // Load VTK library and print which library was not properly loaded
    static {
        if (!vtkNativeLibrary.LoadAllNativeLibraries()) {
            for (vtkNativeLibrary lib : vtkNativeLibrary.values()) {
                if (!lib.IsLoaded()) {
                    System.out.println(lib.GetLibraryName() + " not loaded");
                }
            }
        }
        vtkNativeLibrary.DisableOutputWindow(null);
    }

    // -----------------------------------------------------------------
    public SimpleVTK() {
        super(new BorderLayout());

        // build VTK Pipeline
        vtkConeSource cone = new vtkConeSource();
        cone.SetResolution(8);

        vtkPolyDataMapper coneMapper = new vtkPolyDataMapper();
        coneMapper.SetInputConnection(cone.GetOutputPort());

        vtkActor coneActor = new vtkActor();
        coneActor.SetMapper(coneMapper);

        renWin = new vtkPanel();
        renWin.GetRenderer().AddActor(coneActor);

        // Add Java UI components
        exitButton = new JButton("Exit");
        exitButton.addActionListener(this);

        add(renWin, BorderLayout.CENTER);
        add(exitButton, BorderLayout.SOUTH);
    }

    /** An ActionListener that listens to the button. */
    public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) {
        if (e.getSource().equals(exitButton)) {
            System.exit(0);
        }
    }

    public static void main(String s[]) {
        SwingUtilities.invokeLater(new Runnable() {
            @Override
            public void run() {
                JFrame frame = new JFrame("SimpleVTK");
                frame.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
                frame.getContentPane().setLayout(new BorderLayout());
                frame.getContentPane().add(new SimpleVTK(), BorderLayout.CENTER);
                frame.setSize(400, 400);
                frame.setLocationRelativeTo(null);
                frame.setVisible(true);
            }
        });
    }
}

Java Wrapper Refactoring (Oct 8, 2007)

There were a few problems with the old Java wrappers. One was that, as you said, objects were being deleted before they were supposed to. We hacked in a fix at one point about a year ago which basically made all VTK objects accessed from Java stay around forever, but this was not acceptable either.

Ref:

• http://vtk.org/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/Wrapping/vtkWrapJava.c?r1=1.59&r2=1.60

The other major concern was that the map from Java objects to VTK objects was in the C++ JNI layer, and while we tried to keep this map synchronized with a mutex, race conditions could still occur because other Java threads could advance while the JNI layer was being called (a thread could access a C++ object just as it is being garbage-collected and deleted). There does not seem to be a way to atomically call a JNI method, or ensure the collector doesn't run while a method is called. This second issue forced us to rethink how the map is done, and the solution was to keep the map in Java instead of C++. But we didn't want this Java map to prohibit objects from being garbage collected. Fortunately, Java has a WeakReference class for just this type of purpose. When accessed, the reference will either be valid or null depending on whether it has been garbage-collected.

http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/docs/api/java/lang/ref/WeakReference.html

Thus, the wrapper code can lookup objects in this map when returning objects from methods, and if it is not there, or null, it creates a new Java object representing that C++ object.

A final issue was that we wanted a way to guarantee all C++ destructors are called before the program exits. The natural place to decrement the reference count of the C++ object is in finalize(), which works when things are garbage-collected, but Java does not guarantee that finalize will ever be called. So the method vtkGlobalJavaHash.DeleteAll() will plow through the remaining VTK objects and call Delete on them.