Python Expressions

Last modified 14 Mar 2024 12:46 +01:00
Python scripting expression feature
This page is an introduction to Python scripting expression midPoint feature. Please see the feature page for more details.
Table of Contents

Python is a supported expression language in midPoint. Its language URL is:

http://midpoint.evolveum.com/xml/ns/public/expression/language#python
Python scripting is enabled by Jython that currently only supports Python 2.7. No support for Python 3.x is available now.

Activation for version 4.4 and later

Python support is not built-in and to activate it the following steps are necessary:

  • Download the standalone version as JAR from this URL. MidPoint 4.4 was tested with Jython 2.7.2 but likely any latest stable version of jython-standalone should work.

  • Place the downloaded JAR (e.g. jython-standalone-2.7.2.jar) into the $MIDPOINT_HOME/lib directory. This is the same directory where non-distributable JDBC drivers go, etc. Note, that this is not the same as lib directory in midPoint distribution ZIP.

To be sure that Python scripting is enabled you can check the midpoint.log during the startup for a line like this:

2021-09-24 11:27:55,996 [] [main] INFO (com.evolveum.midpoint.model.common.expression.script.jsr223.Jsr223ScriptEvaluator): Script engine for 'python' initialized in 3481 ms.

If the engine is not initialized, following warning is emitted - this does not prevent midPoint from starting:

2021-09-24 21:51:56,150 [] [main] WARN (com.evolveum.midpoint.model.common.expression.script.jsr223.Jsr223ScriptEvaluator): The JSR-223 scripting engine for 'python' was not found

Reasons for making Python optional

There are a few reasons why Python was made optional:

  • Based on our survey it is hardly used at all.

  • MidPoint WAR/JAR can be lighter by 41 MB, which is significant volume of its size for unused feature.

  • If not present, startup time is faster by 3 or more seconds.

The decision was actually driven by technical issues that appeared after the last upgrade of the Jython library, which somehow didn’t want to initialize from inside our Spring Boot WAR packaging. However, we believe that making Python optional (and still easy to enable) is actually better.

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