Code generation?

PXT
#1

For my PXT target (https://makecode.buildbee.com) I have a couple of scenarios where code generation might be helpful to my cause - so for example:

  1. There’s a popular C-like programming language out there that I would like to parse and convert to makecode and generate mkcd files.

It looks to me like the mkcd file is compressed JSON - with typescript and blockly xml. Could I get away with just generating one? Or would I have to generate both.

  1. There are cases where I want to load in external files and generate a series of blocks from it. Any thoughts how I could do that? So for example I would like to load STLs and SVGs into my editor for editing/extrusion. Any thoughts how I could do that?

Any thoughts or guidance would be lovely!
JFo

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#2
  1. I would guess only need to generate one, we support importing loose typescript and blocks so I think everything should just work
  2. I think you can do this with editor extensions. To use them, you need to create a folder called editor in your target and inside have a file that defines initExtensionsAsync (we do it in pxt-arcade here). The full list of contribution points is here; I think the resourceImporter is what you want.
#3

Neato! Will take a look. Thanks again!! :slight_smile:

#4

Hello, how did you decode the mkcd file into JSON? would you mind sharing some code snippets for that?

#5

I haven’t needed to do that yet - but you can rename the file .7zip then unpack it. You would need to use lzma to uncompress it.

JFo

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#6

To decode an MKCD file, you can use the PXT command line to extract a .mdcd, .hex or even shared game.

pxt extract <path to hex/mkcd/uf2>

See Command Line Tool (makecode.com)

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