NAME

Astro::Aladin::LowLevel - Perl class designed to drive CDS Aladin Application

SYNOPSIS

  my $aladin = new Astro::Aladin::LowLevel( );

DESCRIPTION

Drives the CDS Aladin Application through a anonymous pipe, expects the a copy of the standalone Aladin application to be installed locally and pointed to by the ALADIN_JAR environment variable.

REVISION

$Id: LowLevel.pm,v 1.2 2003/02/24 22:45:56 aa Exp $

METHODS

Constructor

new

Create a new instance from a hash of options

  $aladin = new Astro::Aladin::LowLevel( );

returns a reference to an Aladin object.

Accessor Methods

close

Closes the anonymous pipe to the aladin application

   $aladin->close();

it should be noted that if you DON'T do this after finishing with the object you're going to have zombie Java VM hanging around eating up all your CPU. This is amougst the many reasons why you should use Astro::Aladin rather than Astro::Aladin::LowLevel to drive the Aladin Application.

reopen

Reopen the anonymous pipe to the aladin application

   my $status = $aladin->reopen()

returns undef if the pipe if defined and (presumably) already active.

status

Prints out the status of the current stack.

   $aladin->status()

sync

Waits until all planes are ready

   $aladin->sync()

export

Export a plane to a file

   $aladin->sync( $plane_number, $filename )

get

Gets images and catalogues from the server

   $aladin->get( $server, \@args, $object, $radius );
   $aladin->get( $server, $object );

For example

   $aladin->get( "aladin", ["DSS1"], $object_name, $radius );
   $aladin->get( "aladin", ["DSS1", "LOW"], $object_name, $radius );  
   $aladin->get( "aladin", [""], $object_name, $radius );  

the radius arguement can be omitted

   $aladin->get( "aladin", ["DSS1"], $object_name );
   

or even more simply

   $aladin->get( "simbad", $object_name );

always remember to sync after a series of request, or you might end up closing Aladin before its actually finished download the layers.

General Methods

configure

Configures the object

  $aladin->configure( );

COPYRIGHT

Copyright (C) 2003 University of Exeter. All Rights Reserved.

This program was written as part of the eSTAR project and is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU Public License.

AUTHORS

Alasdair Allan <aa@astro.ex.ac.uk>,