How to find last imported file path and name in maya using Mel?

Question

I am looking to store information of the last imported file in Maya. So when I drag and drop a file it will store file path and filename.

Answer 1

So when you open you script editor, you can toogle History/Echo all commands on to see which functions are called when doing stuff in Maya. In your case, the function performFileDropAction (string $theFile) is called when you drop a file into Maya.

The file containing the code for this function is located here on my computer (I'm using Maya 2014): C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Maya2014\scripts\others\performFileDropAction.mel

I've modified the performFileDropAction (string $theFile) to save the information you desire in a text file in the MAYA_APP_DIR. MAYA_APP_DIR is an environment variable containing the path to your Documents&Settings Maya folder. On my computer: C:\Users\myName\Documents\maya

The lastImportedFile.txt where I save the informations contains this:

C:/Path/To/My/Scene/Folder/
My_Scene.ma

You can replace the performFileDropAction (string $theFile) code with the following:

Note: I'm not a mel programmer, it took me 5 minutes to figure out how to convert a string to an array... So this code can probably be improved"

global proc int
performFileDropAction (string $theFile)
{
global string $gv_operationMode;

    string $save_gv_operationMode = $gv_operationMode;
    $gv_operationMode = "Import";
    int $result = performFileAction ($theFile, 1, "");
    $gv_operationMode = $save_gv_operationMode;

    ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
    // Modified code starts here
    string $sceneArray[]; // Splitted scene array
    string $sceneFolder = ""; // Your scene folder
    string $sceneName = ""; // Your scene name
    $sceneArray = stringToStringArray ($theFile , "/");

    // loop through the array
    for($i=0;$i<size($sceneArray);++$i) {
        if($i == size($sceneArray)-1){
            $sceneName = $sceneArray[$i]; 
        }else{
            $sceneFolder += $sceneArray[$i] + "/"; // Recreate the scene folder
        }
    }

    // Create A String Array With you data
    string $myStrArray[] = {$sceneFolder, $sceneName};  
    // Save your file in Documents and Settings
    string $filePath = `getenv MAYA_APP_DIR` + "/lastImportedFile.txt";
    // Open Your File in write mode
    $fileId = `fopen $filePath "w"` ;  
    // Print Array To File  
    for($line in $myStrArray)  
    fprint $fileId ($line+"\n") ; 

    // Close File  
    fclose $fileId ;  
    ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

    return ($result);
}

Note:

Your can modify pretty much every Maya's menus and option this way but be carefull when modifying Maya's mel scripts. Don't do stupid things or you'll have to reinstall Maya.