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graphviz-automagic-flowcharts

  • Back in 2009 Joseph Guillaume worked with me on a complicated workflow
  • He came up with this python script to help keep track of the steps
  • The simple text file is a list of transformations, inputs and output
  • It is converted to the right format and graphviz creates a html page with pop-outs

Simple text list

Transformation
        description
                the thing 
        inputs
                the thing before
                another thing
        output
                the next thing
        notes
                the thing is this other thing   this is a really long description 
                blah blah asdfasdfasdfasdfasdfa 
 
Transformation
        description
                yet another thing
        inputs
                the next thing
        output
                a final thing
        notes
                this is a note

  • keep this in your work directory and update it whenever you add a step to the workflow
  • the list can be as big as you like (hundreds of steps), and entered in any order, the inputs/output relationships determine how the graph looks at the end
  • to run the script just do the one line

Python code: run

python transformations.py workflow_steps.txt index

  • open the html page and click on a square box to bring up the pop-out
  • short text is shown, long text is replaced by an ellipse and only shown in pop-out

Conclusions

Posted in  research methods


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