Read And save custom data outside .blend

Question

I need to create an addon that load and save pieces of armatures and I want to make the addon capable of loading these saved data in any file. Almost like a preset system but with entire objects.

something like:

def when_addon_loads():

    data = load_from_user_settings("c:/file_path.txt")
    snippets = parse_all(data.split("\n"))
    context.scene.armature_snippets = snippets

Answer 1

You can save individual data blocks to blend files using the bpy.data.libraries.write() function:

import bpy

filepath = "//new_library.blend"

# write selected objects and their data to a blend file
data_blocks = set(bpy.context.selected_objects)
bpy.data.libraries.write(filepath, data_blocks)


# write all meshes starting with a capital letter and
# set them with fake-user enabled so they aren't lost on re-saving
data_blocks = {mesh for mesh in bpy.data.meshes if mesh.name[:1].isupper()}
bpy.data.libraries.write(filepath, data_blocks, fake_user=True)


# write all materials, textures and node groups to a library
data_blocks = {*bpy.data.materials, *bpy.data.textures, *bpy.data.node_groups}
bpy.data.libraries.write(filepath, data_blocks)

See the API documentation for more info.