View source for Sending data between Windows Applications

This is a brief explanation of code used to send data between Windows applications using a simple text-file that is being written and read by the communicating programs.

This code is part of a [http://cstwiki.wtb.tue.nl/index.php?title=PRE2015_4_Groep1#scripts project] to create a robot technique that allows users to hug someone when separated by a disctance like a phone call.

We do realise that this is an ad hoc method and that there are better ways out there to do this, but it suffices for our prototype.

== Data format ==
[[File:Example_text-file.png|thumb|right| Example of the text-file]]
An example of the format of the data to be written to and read from the text file is as follows: <code>0:3.1415926 </code>. The number before the <code>:</code> is the index of the value in the data array. The number following the <code>:</code> is the actual value of the data, in this case <math in line>\pi</math>.

== Writing to the text-file ==

== Reading the text file ==

This part of the code belongs to the application responsible for sending ROS messages to a Ubuntu machine from a Windows machine. Additional information about this application's code can be found [http://cstwiki.wtb.tue.nl/index.php?title=Rosserial_Script#Sending_the_data_to_ROS here].

[[File:Read_file.png|x420px]]
These lines are responsible for reading the data from the text-file with the absolute file path known to both applications. In this code, the absolute file path is <code>"C:\\angles.txt"</code> (line '''49'''). It should be replaced by the absolute file path of the file the user would like both applications to use. <code>in</code> is an input stream intialized somewhere else in the code.

Per new line in the text-file, the position of the <code>:</code> is found (line '''56'''). In the lines '''58-61''', the index of the data and its value are stored in <code>dataNr</code> and <code>angle</code> respectively. These are then stored in the <code>data</code> array created in a different part of the code.