flow-view

v6.0.1
is a visual editor for dataflow programming
dataflow visual editor vanilla web-component

flow-view

is a visual editor for Dataflow programming

Demo
flow view Simpsons example

Installation

Using npm

With npm do

npm install flow-view

Using a CDN

Try this in your HTML page

<script type="module">
  import { FlowView } from 'https://unpkg.com/flow-view';

  const flowView = new FlowView(document.body);
</script>

Usage

GUI

Try demo here

  • Drag on canvas to translate all items.
  • Click on item to select it.
  • Click while pressing SHIFT to enable multi selection.
  • Drag selected items to translate them.
  • Drag from a node output to a node input to create an edge.
  • Press BACKSPACE to delete selected items.
  • Double click on edge to delete it.
  • Double click on canvas to open the selector.
  • Type into the selector then press ENTER to create a new node.

Constructor

Create a FlowView instance and pass it a container. It will create a flow-view custom element and attach it to the container. Be aware that the flow-view custom element will fit the whole height of its container, so make sure to style properly to avoid a zero height container.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
  <body>
    <script type="module">
      import { FlowView } from 'https://unpkg.com/flow-view';

      const flowView = new FlowView(document.body);
    </script>
  </body>
</html>

If some flow-view custom element is already in the page, it can be passed to the FlowView constructor. argument.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
  <body>
    <flow-view id="my-view"></flow-view>

    <script type="module">
      import { FlowView } from 'https://unpkg.com/flow-view';

      const flowView = new FlowView(document.getElementById('my-view'));
    </script>
  </body>
</html>

Color schemes

Optionally set color scheme. If not provided it defaults to both light and dark according to system preferences.

Light scheme.

<flow-view light></flow-view>

Dark scheme.

<flow-view dark></flow-view>

addNodeDefinitions({ nodes?, types? })

Add a list to define which nodes are available. It is not required but it makes sense to be provided in the majority of use cases.

flowView.addNodeDefinitions({
    nodes: [
        { name: "Marge", type: "parent" },
        { name: "Homer", type: "parent" },
        { name: "Bart", type: "child" },
        { name: "Lisa", type: "child" },
        { name: "Mr. Burns" },
    ],
    types: {
        "parent": {
            inputs: [],
            outputs: [
                { name: "out" },
            ],
        },
        "child": {
            inputs: [
                { name: "in1" },
                { name: "in2" },
            ],
            outputs: [],
        },
    },
});

node(id)

Get flow-view node by id.

const node = flowView.node("abc");

See also color schemes example.

edge(id)

Get flow-view edge by id.

const edge = flowView.edge("abc");

graph

Access current flow-view graph.

console.log(flowView.graph);

loadGraph({ nodes = [], edges = [] })

Load a flow-view graph.

flowView.loadGraph({
    nodes: [
        {
            id: "dad",
            text: "Homer",
            x: 60,
            y: 70,
            outs: [{ id: "children" }],
        },
        {
            id: "mom",
            text: "Marge",
            x: 160,
            y: 70,
            outs: [{ id: "children" }],
        },
        {
            id: "son",
            text: "Bart",
            x: 60,
            y: 240,
            ins: [{ id: "father" }, { id: "mother" }],
        },
        {
            id: "daughter",
            text: "Lisa",
            x: 220,
            y: 220,
            ins: [{ id: "father" }, { id: "mother" }],
        },
    ],
    edges: [
        { from: ["dad", "children"], to: ["son", "father"] },
        { from: ["dad", "children"], to: ["daughter", "father"] },
        { from: ["mom", "children"], to: ["son", "mother"] },
        { from: ["mom", "children"], to: ["daughter", "mother"] },
    ],
});

clearGraph()

Empty current graph.

flowView.clearGraph();

destroy()

Delete flow-view custom element.

flowView.destroy();

An use case for destroy() is the following. Suppose you are using Next.js, you need to load flow-view with an async import into a useEffect which needs to return a callback to be called when component is unmounted.

This is a sample code.

import type { FlowView } from "flow-view";
import { FC, useEffect, useRef } from "react";

const MyComponent: FC = () => {
    const flowViewContainerRef = useRef<HTMLDivElement | null>(null);
    const flowViewRef = useRef<FlowView | null>(null);

    useEffect(() => {
        let unmounted = false;

        const importFlowView = async () => {
            if (unmounted) return;
            if (flowViewContainerRef.current === null) return;
            if (flowViewRef.current !== null) return;

            const { FlowView } = await import("flow-view");

            const flowView = new FlowView({
                container: flowViewContainerRef.current,
            });
            flowViewRef.current = flowView;
        };

        importFlowView();

        return () => {
            unmounted = true;
            if (flowViewRef.current !== null) flowViewRef.current.destroy();
        };
    }, [flowViewRef, flowViewContainerRef]);

    return <div ref={flowViewContainerRef}></div>;
};

newNode() and newEdge()

Create nodes and edges programmatically. See programmatically example here.

// Create two nodes.

const node1 = flowView.newNode({
    text: "Hello",
    ins: [{}, {}],
    outs: [{ id: "output1" }],
    x: 100,
    y: 100,
    width: 80,
});
const node2 = flowView.newNode({
    text: "World",
    ins: [{ id: "input1" }],
    width: 100,
    x: 250,
    y: 400,
});

// Connect nodes with an edge.
flowView.newEdge({
    from: [node1.id, "output1"],
    to: [node2.id, "input1"],
});

deleteNode() and deleteEdge()

Delete nodes and edges programmatically. Notice that when a node is deleted, all its connected edges are deleted too.

const nodeId = "abc";
const edgeId = "123";

flowView.deleteNode(nodeId);
flowView.deleteEdge(edgeId);

addNodeClass(nodeType, NodeClass)

Can add custom node class. See custom node example here.

onChange(callback)

Set callback to be invoked on every view change. See demo code here.

Callback signature is ({ action, data }, info) => void, where

  • action can be CREATE_NODE, DELETE_NODE, etc.
  • data change based on action
  • info can contain { isLoadGraph: true } or other optional information.

nodeTextToType(func)

Set a function that will be invoked on node creation to resolve node type from node text.

License

MIT

npm i flow-view

Metadata

  • MIT
  • >=16.0.0
  • Gianluca Casati
  • released 2/10/2023

Downloads

Maintainers