Non-Tool WbEnvironment API

This chapter documents the non-tool surface on WbEnvironment and related utility namespaces. Tool wrappers are documented in Tool API Reference (All Tools).

Runtime And Licensing Constructors

WbEnvironment()
WbEnvironment.from_floating_license_id(...)
WbEnvironment.from_signed_entitlement_file(...)
WbEnvironment.from_signed_entitlement_json(...)

Runtime Introspection And Discovery

version()
license_type()
license_info()
list_tools()
list_tools_json()
list_tool_catalog_json()
list_tools_detailed(include_locked=False)
describe_tool(tool_id, include_locked=False)
get_tool_metadata_json(tool_id)
get_tool_info_json(tool_id)
get_tool_help_html(tool_id) — Retrieve the HTML help page for a tool (see below)
search_tools(query, include_locked=False)
categories()
category(name)
domain_namespaces()
domain(name)

Accessing Tool Help

The get_tool_help_html(tool_id) function returns a complete HTML help page for a tool. This is useful for building custom GUIs, Jupyter notebook widgets, and documentation pipelines that need up-to-date tool descriptions without bundling help files separately.

Signature:

def get_tool_help_html(tool_id: str) -> str:
    """Return the HTML help page for a tool as a string.
    
    Returns an empty string if help is not available for the tool.
    Help content is pulled from the installed whitebox_workflows package
    (whitebox_workflows/help/<tool_id>.html), ensuring it stays in sync
    with the version of whitebox-workflows that was installed.
    """

Examples:

Display help in a Jupyter notebook:

from IPython.display import HTML
import whitebox_workflows as wbw

wbe = wbw.WbEnvironment()
html = wbe.get_tool_help_html('slope')
HTML(html)

Retrieve help via the module-level function (for custom applications):

import whitebox_workflows as wbw

help_html = wbw.get_tool_help_html('d8_pointer')
print(len(help_html), 'bytes of HTML')  # Check that help was found

Generate documentation pages for all tools:

import whitebox_workflows as wbw

wbe = wbw.WbEnvironment()
for tool_id in wbe.list_tools():
    html = wbe.get_tool_help_html(tool_id)
    if html:
        with open(f'{tool_id}_help.html', 'w') as f:
            f.write(html)

Availability: Help HTML is always available for tools in the standard tool catalog. Tools added in future releases of whitebox-workflows will automatically appear with help, assuming the release includes HTML documentation for those tools.