How to get edge indices from selection?

Question

Is there's a way to get the indices properly from a Pymel/Maya API function?

I know Pymel has a function called getEdges() however according to their docs this get's them from the selected face, however I just need them from the selected edges.

Is this possible?

Answer 1

While your answer will work theodox, I did find a much simpler resolution, after some serious digging!

Turns out, hiding and not very well documented, was a function ironically called indices(), I did search for this but nothing came up in the docs.

Pymel

selection[0].indices()[0]

The above will give us the integer of the selected edge. Simple and elegant!

Answer 2

Do you mean you just the expanded list of selected edges? That's just FilterExpand -sm 32 or cmds.filterExpand(sm=32) or pm.filterExpand(sm=32) on an edge selection. Those commands are always strings, you grab the indices out them with a regular expression:

# where objs is a list of edges, for example cmds.ls(sl=True) on an edge selection
cList = "".join(cmds.filterExpand( *objs, sm=32))
outList = set(map ( int, re.findall('\[([0-9]+)\]', cList ) ) ) 

which will give you a set containing the integer indices of the edges (I use sets so its easy to do things like find edges common to two groups without for loops or if tests)