Vesta

Vesta is a Vestaboard client library for Python. It provides an API client and character encoding utilities.

Installation

Vesta requires Python 3.7 or later. It can be installed via PyPI:

$ python -m pip install vesta

It's only runtime dependency is the Requests library, which will be installed automatically.

Usage

API Client

The Client type is initialized with an API key and secret:

>>> import vesta
>>> client = vesta.Client(API_KEY, API_SECRET)

Then, you can make API calls using one of the provided methods:

>>> client.get_viewer()
{'_id': ..., '_created': '1629081092624', 'type': 'installation', 'installation': {'_id': ...}}

>>> client.get_subscriptions()
[{'_id': ..., '_created': '1629081092624', 'title': None, 'icon': None, 'installation': {'_id': ..., 'installable': {'_id': ...}}, 'boards': [{'_id': ...}]}]

>>> client.post_message(SUBSCRIPTION_ID, "Hello, World")
{'message': {'id': ..., 'text': 'Hello, World', 'created': '1635801572442'}}

Character Encoding

All Vestaboard characters (letters, numbers, symbols, and colors) are encoded as integer character codes. Vesta includes some useful routines for working with these character codes.

encode() encodes a string as a list of character codes. In addition to printable characters, the string can contain character code sequences inside curly braces, such as {5} or {65}.

>>> vesta.encode("{67} Hello, World {68}")
[67, 0, 8, 5, 12, 12, 15, 55, 0, 23, 15, 18, 12, 4, 0, 68]

encode_row() encodes a string as a row of character codes. It builds on encode() by providing alignment control.

>>> vesta.encode_row("{67} Hello, World {68}", align="center")
[0, 0, 0, 67, 0, 8, 5, 12, 12, 15, 55, 0, 23, 15, 18, 12, 4, 0, 68, 0, 0, 0]

encode_text() encodes a string of text into rows of character codes, further building on encode() and encode_row() with the addition of alignment, margin control, and line breaks.

>>> encode_text("multiple\nlines\nof\ntext", align="center", valign="middle")
[
    [0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0],
    [0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 13, 21, 12, 20, 9, 16, 12, 5, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0],
    [0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 12, 9, 14, 5, 19, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0],
    [0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 15, 6, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0],
    [0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 20, 5, 24, 20, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0]
    [0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0],
]

Lastly, pprint() can be used to pretty-print encoded characters to the console, which can be useful during development.

>>> vesta.pprint([0, 0, 0, 67, 0, 8, 5, 12, 12, 15, 55, 0, 23, 15, 18, 12, 4, 0, 68, 0, 0, 0])
| | | |◼︎| |H|E|L|L|O|,| |W|O|R|L|D| |◼︎| | | |

Message Posting

Messages can be posted as either text strings or two-dimensional arrays of character codes representing the exact positions of characters on the board.

If text is specified, lines will be centered horizontally and vertically if possible. Character codes will be inferred for alphanumeric and punctuation, or can be explicitly specified in-line in the message with curly braces containing the character code.

License

This project is licensed under the terms of the MIT license.

Copyright (c) 2021 Jon Parise jon@indelible.org

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

Changelog

0.7.2 - 2021-12-30

Added

• encode_text()'s valign argument can be set to None to disable row padding.

Changed

• encode()'s error handling has been improved. A ValueError will now be raised for all unsupported character codes, including those within the [0, 69] range such as 57, 58, and 61.

0.7.1 - 2021-12-19

Fixed

• encode_text() was adding a leading blank character to the row after a line break.

0.7.0 - 2021-12-19

Added

• encode_text() offers a valign argument for controlling vertical alignment within the board.
• Client.post_message() now raises ValueError if message is a list of encoded characters with the wrong dimensions.

Changed

• encode_text() now always produces six rows of output (a full board).

Removed

• Dropped support for Python 3.6, which has officially reached the end of its supported life.

0.6.0 - 2021-12-05

Added

• encode_text() for encoding lines of text

Fixed

• Fix space character encoding

0.5.1 - 2021-11-06

Added

• Initial Sphinx-based documentation

0.5.0 - 2021-11-01

• Initial release