API Code Mnemonics

Coding mad hacks
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Hello everyone,
Thanks for the madhack category — I’d like to contribute something that helped me a lot in working with the Maya API using Python.

When working with the Maya API in Python, it’s important to clearly distinguish between two spaces:

  1. The current state of the Maya scene
  2. Python’s in-memory space, where class instances, caches, and local data live

These two memory spaces exist independently and are not automatically synchronized.

Typical example:

# Querying actual scene connections
geoNode.getConnections()

# Accessing cached data from memory
geoNode.attr1

Important notes:

  • Undo/Redo only affects the scene state
  • Crashing Maya or opening files from outsourcing teams clears Python memory completely

To avoid confusion, I use a simple mnemonic rule based on function naming:

read_*  → works with Python in-memory data only
get_*   → pulls fresh data from the Maya scene

Mental model:

  • Python memory = a book (static, structured, local)
  • Maya scene = a physical space (dynamic, evaluated, external)

This small naming convention helped me a lot when designing tools, especially to avoid bugs caused by stale or desynced data.

Maybe this seems obvious now, and it might not qualify as a full-on “madhack”,
but back then it really clarified things for me.

Hope it helps someone out there.

1 Like
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very intresting read, thanks for sharing this!