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8.1.1 Types

In addition to standard types like integers and strings, the API uses four MetaEdit+ specific types: MEOop, MEAny, METype and MENull. All except MENull can also be members of arrays, e.g. MEOopArray: in a client, the language determines the representation of arrays, but normally it is simply a native array of MEOops, rather than a specific MEOopArray class.

MEOop

areaID: int
objectID: int
A handle to a GOPRR conceptual or representational instance in the repository. A concepts can be a Graph, Object, Relationship, Role, Port, Property or Binding. A representation can be a Diagram, Matrix or Table, or an object or binding representation. Generally, an MEOop is either built based on output from an oid; command in a generator (as in the Watch example), or then obtained as an answer to a previous API command.

MEAny

meType: string
meValue: string
Used to represent a value that could be one of several types. meType can take string values such as MEOop, MENull, String, Text, Integer, Point or OrderedCollection. Note that it is not an METype. meValue is the actual value, stored as a string representation:
For MEOop: 3_12345 (areaID, underscore, objectID)
For String or Text: 'a string' (note the quotes; embedded quotes are doubled)
For Integer: 34 (note you must convert this string value to an integer)
For Point: 10,20 (x co-ordinate, y co-ordinate: note no space after the comma)
For OrderedCollection: space-separated representations as above of MEOop or String

METype

name: string
Represents a type from the metamodel. Can be either the internal name (e.g. Use_Case_sysadmin_12387234) or the user-visible name (e.g. Use Case). MetaEdit+ will return METypes with the internal name; the user-visible name can be obtained from an METype with the typeName method.

MENull

Represents the nil value, e.g. the return value from a command that returns nothing, or (within an MEAny) the value of a property whose data type is an object type, but which has no object assigned yet as a value.

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