Nested References in Maya

I've found myself in the need at work to be able to get all the references a shot had. What you can get with file(q = True, r = True) are only the top level references leaving behind the nested ones.

I've read somewhere that is a good practice trying to avoid such levels of depth, but in this case we were in a closet.

So after a while searching the web and the official Maya python documentation i hit with referenceQuery and the "children" flag.

Finally i developed this simple method that fills a python list with reference filenames:


    def add_nested_references(self,parent_ref_list):
       
        for parent_ref in parent_ref_list:
            child_list = mc.referenceQuery(parent_ref, f = True, ch = True)
            if child_list != None:
                   self.add_nested_references(child_list)
                   parent_ref_list.extend(child_list)