How to pass variable (tuple) to operator invoke

Question

How can I pass a variable (if possible a tuple) to an operator class I'm calling by it's invoke?

class MyOperator(bpy.types.Operator):
    """Operate"""
    bl_idname = "object.myoperator"
    bl_label = "Operate"

    myvar = None
    filepath = bpy.props.StringProperty(subtype="FILE_PATH")

    def invoke(self, context, event): 
        context.window_manager.fileselect_add(self)
        return {'RUNNING_MODAL'}

    def execute(self, context):   
        print(self.myvar)

...

prop = bpy.ops.object.myoperator('INVOKE_DEFAULT')
prop.myvar = "Hello World"

Or:

bpy.ops.object.myoperator('INVOKE_DEFAULT').myvar = "Hello World"

Error:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "\myoperator.py", line 151, in execute
AttributeError: 'set' object has no attribute 'myvar'

location: <unknown location>:-1

I've tried everything I could think of for hours now, but it seems I'm incapable of doing that.

Answer 1

I changed your code snippet a bit and made some comment. I hope that solves your problem.

import bpy

class MyOperator(bpy.types.Operator):
    """Operate"""
    bl_idname = "object.myoperator"
    bl_label = "Operate"

    # make the variable a property of the operator
    myvar = bpy.props.StringProperty()
    filepath = bpy.props.StringProperty(subtype="FILE_PATH")

    def invoke(self, context, event): 
        context.window_manager.fileselect_add(self)
        return {'RUNNING_MODAL'}

    def execute(self, context):   
        print(self.myvar)

        # I added this here because otherwise it will through an exception at the end
        return {"FINISHED"}    

# this is how you invoke the operator, but you have to register it before
bpy.ops.object.myoperator("INVOKE_DEFAULT", myvar = "Hello World")  

Unfortunally you can't do the same thing with tuples (except you have numbers)... Here is some more information on how to define properties: https://www.blender.org/api/blender_python_api_2_76_2/bpy.props.html

About tuples as parameters:

When the tuple only consists of numbers or booleans, the tuple always has the same length <= 32, you can use either a BoolVectorProperty, IntVectorProperty or FloatVectorProperty.

A more generic solution would be to use the CollectionProperty. Therefor you first have to make a property group that contains the structure of the individual elements in the collection. In your case you only have a tuple with multiple numbers, so the PropertyGroup would look like so:

import bpy
from bpy.props import *

class SingleNumberProperty(bpy.types.PropertyGroup):
    value = FloatProperty()

In your operator you can define the collection property that uses this type.

class MyOperator(bpy.types.Operator):
    bl_idname = "my_operator.my_operator"
    bl_label = "My Operator"

    numbers_collection= CollectionProperty(type = SingleNumberProperty)

In the execute function you can unpack this collection in the following way:

def execute(self, context):
    my_numbers = []
    for item in self.numbers_collection:
        my_numbers.append(item.value)
    return {"FINISHED"}

The part that was the most difficult to find out is how to pass the tuple as collection. Basicly you have to create a list of dictionaries. Each of these dictionaries need to have a "name" key. In addition to that they can contain the data you want to set on the properties ("value" in this case).

The list of dicts can look like so:

[ {"name" : "", "value" : 12},
  {"name" : "", "value" : 15},
  {"name" : "", "value" : 20} ]

So lets say you have a list of numbers and want to transform it to this data structure:

numbers = [12, 15, 20]

# long way
packed_numbers = []     
for number in numbers:
    packed_numbers.append({"name" : "", "value" : number}) 

# more pythonic way
packed_numbers = [{"name" : "", "value" : number} for number in numbers]

The final step is to call the operator and pass these packed numbers as parameter to the collection property:

bpy.ops.my_operator.my_operator(numbers_collection = packed_numbers)