Using the REST-API with python from within Grasshopper

One alternative for those interested in using the REST-API from within Grasshopper is to use python. However, to run the examples shown in the REST-API Documentation, additional steps are needed to configure the python environment used by Grasshopper (IronPython). Specifically, the library requests (version 2.18.4) is needed. The steps to set up the environment are described below.

Install IronPython 2.7

Download IronPython from https://github.com/IronLanguages/ironpython2/releases/tag/ipy-2.7.11 and install it as any normal program. The default installation in Windows is C:\Program Files\IronPython 2.7\.

$SYSTEM_IRONPYTHON = "C:\Program Files\IronPython 2.7\"

Install requests library

Open powershell or cmd and do:

"C:\Program Files\IronPython 2.7\Scripts\pip.exe" install --user requests==2.18.4

This command installs the request library in the IronPython installation, as well as any library required by request. These libraries are installed in the following folder: C:\Users\<User>\AppData\Roaming\Python\IronPython27\.

$LOCAL_IRONPYTHON = "C:\Users\<User>\AppData\Roaming\Python\IronPython27\"

Copy files to Rhino python directory

Files will be copied to two folders:

C:\Program Files\Rhino 6\Plug-ins\IronPython

$SYSTEM_RHINO = "C:\Program Files\Rhino 6\Plug-ins\IronPython"

C:\Users\<User>\AppData\Roaming\McNeel\Rhinoceros\6.0\Plug-ins\IronPython (some hash)

$LOCAL_RHINO = "C:\Users\<User>\AppData\Roaming\McNeel\Rhinoceros\6.0\Plug-ins\IronPython (some hash)"

Copy the files with the following commands in powershell:

$LOCAL_IRONPYTHON = "C:\Users\<User>\AppData\Roaming\Python\IronPython27\"
$SYSTEM_IRONPYTHON = "C:\Program Files\IronPython 2.7\"
$LOCAL_RHINO = "C:\Users\<User>\AppData\Roaming\McNeel\Rhinoceros\6.0\Plug-ins\IronPython (some hash)"
$SYSTEM_RHINO = "C:\Program Files\Rhino 6\Plug-ins\IronPython"

cp -r $LOCAL_IRONPYTHON/Lib/site-packages/certifi $LOCAL_RHINO/settings/lib/certify
cp -r $LOCAL_IRONPYTHON/Lib/site-packages/idna $LOCAL_RHINO/settings/lib/idna
cp -r $LOCAL_IRONPYTHON/Lib/site-packages/chardet $LOCAL_RHINO/settings/lib/chardet
cp -r $LOCAL_IRONPYTHON/Lib/site-packages/requests $LOCAL_RHINO/settings/lib/requests
cp -r $LOCAL_IRONPYTHON/Lib/site-packages/urllib3 $LOCAL_RHINO/settings/lib/urllib3

cp $SYSTEM_IRONPYTHON/Lib/stringprep.py $LOCAL_RHINO/settings/lib/stringprep.py
cp $SYSTEM_IRONPYTHON/Lib/ssl.py $LOCAL_RHINO/settings/lib/ssl.py

cp $SYSTEM_IRONPYTHON/Lib/encodings/idna.py $SYSTEM_RHINO/Lib/encodings/idna.py

Modify the python examples

For some reason there is a problem with the validation of the SSL certificate of the website. To avoid an error message, modify the respective request function to add the option verify=False, i.e.

...

res = requests.post(url=URL, json=task_data,
                    headers={"Authorization": "your-secret-key"},
                    verify=False)

Done!