The FlowProject

This chapter describes how to setup a complete workflow via the implementation of a FlowProject.

Setup and Interface

To implement a more automated workflow, we can subclass a FlowProject:

# project.py
from flow import FlowProject

class Project(FlowProject):
    pass

if __name__ == '__main__':
    Project().main()

Tip

You can generate boiler-plate templates like the one above with the $ flow init function. There are multiple different templates available via the -t/--template option.

Executing this script on the command line will give us access to this project’s specific command line interface:

~/my_project $ python project.py
usage: project.py [-h] [-d] {status,next,run,script,submit,exec} ...

Note

You can have multiple implementations of FlowProject that all operate on the same signac project! This may be useful, for example, if you want to implement two very distinct workflows that operate on the same data space. Simply put those in different modules, e.g., project_a.py and project_b.py.

Defining a workflow

We will reproduce the simple workflow introduced in the previous section by first copying both the greeted() condition function and the hello() operation function into the project.py module. We then use the operation() and the post() decorator functions to specify that the hello() operation function is part of our workflow and that it should only be executed if the greeted() condition is not met.

# project.py
from flow import FlowProject


class Project(FlowProject):
    pass


def greeted(job)
    return job.isfile('hello.txt')


@Project.operation
@Project.post(greeted)
def hello(job):
    with job:
        with open('hello.txt', 'w') as file:
            file.write('world!\n')


if __name__ == '__main__':
    Project().main()

We can define both pre and post conditions, which allow us to define arbitrary workflows as an acyclic graph. A operation is only executed if all pre-conditions are met, and at at least one post-condition is not met.

Tip

Cheap conditions should be placed before expensive conditions as they are evaluated lazily! That means for example, that given two pre-conditions, the following order of definition would be preferable:

@Project.operation
@Project.pre(cheap_condition)
@Project.pre(expensive_condition)
def hello(job):
    pass

The same holds for post-conditions.

We can then execute this workflow with:

~/my_project $ python project.py run
Execute operation 'hello(15e548a2d943845b33030e68801bd125)'...
hello 15e548a2d943845b33030e68801bd125
Execute operation 'hello(288f97857257baee75d9d84bf0e9dfa8)'...
hello 288f97857257baee75d9d84bf0e9dfa8
Execute operation 'hello(2b985fa90138327bef586f9ad87fc310)'...
hello 2b985fa90138327bef586f9ad87fc310
# ...

If we implemented and integrated the operation and condition functions correctly, calling the run command twice should produce no output the second time, since the greeted() condition is met for all jobs and the hello() operation should therefore not be executed.

The Project Status

The FlowProject class allows us to generate a status view of our project. The status view provides information about which conditions are met and what operations are pending execution.

A condition function which is supposed to be shown in the status view is called a label-function. We can convert any condition function into a label function by adding the label() decorator:

# project.py
# ...

@Project.label
def greeted(job):
    return job.isfile('hello.txt')

# ...

We will reset the workflow for only a few jobs to get a more interesting status view:

~/my_project $ signac find a.\$lt 5 | xargs -I{} rm workspace/{}/hello.txt

We then generate a detailed status view with:

~/my_project.py status --detailed
Collect job status info: 100%|█████████████████████████████████████████████| 10/10
# Overview:
Total # of jobs: 10

label    ratio
-------  -------------------------------------------------
greeted  |####################--------------------| 50.00%

# Detailed View:
job_id                            labels
--------------------------------  --------
0d32543f785d3459f27b8746f2053824  greeted
14fb5d016557165019abaac200785048
└● hello [U]
2af7905ebe91ada597a8d4bb91a1c0fc
└● hello [U]
2e6ba580a9975cf0c01cb3c3f373a412  greeted
42b7b4f2921788ea14dac5566e6f06d0
└● hello [U]
751c7156cca734e22d1c70e5d3c5a27f  greeted
81ee11f5f9eb97a84b6fc934d4335d3d  greeted
9bfd29df07674bc4aa960cf661b5acd2
└● hello [U]
9f8a8e5ba8c70c774d410a9107e2a32b
└● hello [U]
b1d43cd340a6b095b41ad645446b6800  greeted
Legend: ○:ineligible ●:eligible ▹:active ▸:running □:completed

This view provides information about what labels are met for each job and what operations are eligible for execution. If we did things right, then only those jobs without the greeted label should have the hello operation pending.

As shown before, all eligible operations can then be executed with:

~/my_project $ python project.py run

Generating Execution Scripts:

Instead of executing operations directly we can also create a script for execution. If we have any pending operations, a script might look like this:

~/my_project $ python project.py script

set -e
set -u

cd /Users/csadorf/my_project

# Operation 'hello' for job '14fb5d016557165019abaac200785048':
/Users/csadorf/miniconda3/bin/python project.py exec hello 14fb5d016557165019abaac200785048
# Operation 'hello' for job '2af7905ebe91ada597a8d4bb91a1c0fc':
/Users/csadorf/miniconda3/bin/python project.py exec hello 2af7905ebe91ada597a8d4bb91a1c0fc
# Operation 'hello' for job '42b7b4f2921788ea14dac5566e6f06d0':
/Users/csadorf/miniconda3/bin/python project.py exec hello 42b7b4f2921788ea14dac5566e6f06d0
# Operation 'hello' for job '9bfd29df07674bc4aa960cf661b5acd2':
/Users/csadorf/miniconda3/bin/python project.py exec hello 9bfd29df07674bc4aa960cf661b5acd2
# Operation 'hello' for job '9f8a8e5ba8c70c774d410a9107e2a32b':
/Users/csadorf/miniconda3/bin/python project.py exec hello 9f8a8e5ba8c70c774d410a9107e2a32b

These scripts can be used for the execution of operations directly, or they could be submitted to a cluster environment for remote execution. For more information about how to submit operations for execution to a cluster environment, see the Cluster Submission chapter.

This script is generated from a default jinja2 template, which is shipped with the package. We can extend this default template or write our own to cutomize the script generation process.

Here is an example for such a template, that would essentially generate the same output:

cd {{ project.config.project_dir }}

{% for operation in operations %}
operation.cmd
{% endfor %}

Note

Unlike the default template, this exemplary template would not allow for parallel execution.

Checkout the next section for a guide on how to submit operations to a cluster environment.