Introduction

Sympathy’s standard library contains a lot of useful nodes and it is also possible to add complete third-party libraries without writing any code yourself. But sometimes you might come to a point when the node that you need simply has not been written yet. One option is to write your own node.

All Sympathy nodes are written in Python, http://python.org, a powerful scripting language whose main goal is to be easy to learn. Python has a very powerful set of standard libraries, but the standard libraries are a bit lacking when it comes to high performance numerical computations. Because of this Sympathy comes with some third party libraries that are great for numerical computations and data analysis:

numpy

The basis for most of the other libraries mentioned here and therefore also the most useful library. It provides you with a generic data type for numerical data and some basic calculations on those data types. See http://wiki.scipy.org/Tentative_NumPy_Tutorial, or http://docs.scipy.org/doc/numpy/user/basics.html, or http://wiki.scipy.org/NumPy_for_Matlab_Users for some introduction.

scipy

Provides functions for more advanced analysis such as numerical integration, solving differential equations, optimization, and working with sparse matrices. See http://docs.scipy.org/doc/scipy/reference/.

pandas

See http://pandas.pydata.org/.

To create and edit nodes you will need some text editor or Python IDE. If you do not already have a favorite editor/IDE, we recommend Visual Studio Code or PyCharm (PyCharm Community Editon is free to use).

Creating new nodes

The easiest way to get started writing your own node is to use the node wizard. It will create an outline of a node code for you, so you can get right at implementing the actual functionality of the node. To start the node wizard go to File->Wizards->New Node.

On the first page of the wizard you can edit some descriptive meta data for your new node. Please consider carefully what you write here as this affects how well a user will be able to understand what your node does. See the section Node definition for detailed info about the different fields.

The second page allows you to add input ports to your node. Enter a name, a description and choose a data type, and press Add. On the next page you can add output ports in the same way.

The next page of the wizard is where you choose in which library your node should be created as well as where in the internal structure of that library the node should be placed. The Library Identifier field should contain an identifier for the whole library. It should be the same for every node in the entire library. It should be of the form <extension>.<organisation>. Something along the lines of com.example. The Library Path field should be the absolute path to the library where you want the node, and the Node Path should be the relative path inside that library to the folder where the node should be placed. If your library is present in the file tree structure below the text fields, you can also simply click on the folder where you want the node and all fields on this page should be automatically filled. Note, libraries that you create will not be placed in the library view automatically.

Click Next to proceed to the last page of the node wizard where you will be presented with a preview of the node code. When finishing the wizard this code will be written to a file that represents your node.

Warning

You can in theory add new nodes to Sympathy’s standard library (by moving the python files manually) or to some third-party library and have them appear in the Library view in Sympathy. This is not recommended though as it makes it much more difficult to manage library updates and such. In order to place nodes under a certain folder in the library view, read the section “Library tags” below.

The node code

Nodes are loaded from their definition files when Sympathy is started, and only Python files with names starting with node_ and ending with .py will generate nodes. You can place the nodes in subfolders to group related nodes together. Now, create a file called node_helloworld.py and open it in your editor of choice.

Without further ado let us look at the code for a simple example node:

from sympathy.api import node as synode
from sympathy.api.nodeconfig import Port, Ports, Tag, Tags


class HelloWorld(synode.Node):
    name = 'Hello world!'
    description = 'An amazing node!'
    nodeid = 'com.example.boblib.helloworld'
    tags = Tags(Tag.Development.Example)

    def execute(self, node_context):
        print('Hello world!')

Copy this code into the file node_helloworld.py, reload the libraries in Sympathy (Control->Reload Library) and add the node to a new workflow.

A node is defined as a Python class which inherits from sympathy.api.node.Node. The name of the class is irrelevant. The class definition starts with a description of the node, then you have to define some variables that contain meta data about the node. Lastly, you write the method that actually controls the behavior of the node (such as execute). For all the details of what goes in a node class, please refer to the Nodes.

You can place several such classes in the same python file, but only do this if they are clearly related to one another.

Library tags

In the example above you may have spotted the tags variable. Each node can be part of a library tag. This specific one:

tags = Tags(Tag.Development.Example)

will group the node into the Development->Test folder in the library hierarchy.

To see what different tags are available have a look in sylib/librarytag_sylib.py or look at the code of any specific node which uses the tag that you are interested in. If you don’t specify a tag the node will be shown under a folder called “Unknown” in the library view.

Adding input and output ports

The possibilities for a node with neither input nor output ports are quite limited. To add a single Table output port to your node, add the class variable outputs as follows:

import numpy as np

from sympathy.api import node as synode
from sympathy.api.nodeconfig import Ports, Port, Tags, Tag

class FooTableNode(synode.Node):
    """Creates a foo Table"""

    name = 'Create foo Table'
    nodeid = 'com.example.boblib.footable'
    tags = Tags(Tag.Development.Example)

    outputs = Ports([Port.Table('Table of foo', name='foo')])

    def execute(self, node_context):
        outputfile = node_context.output['foo']
        outputfile.set_column_from_array('foo column', np.array([1, 2, 3]))

Also notice the new import statements at the head of the file. Reload the library and add a new instance of your node to a workflow. You can see that it now has an output port of the Table type.

Writing to the output file is as easy as adding those two lines to your execute method.

The object outputfile which is used in the example is of the class table.File Please refer to the Table API to get more information about how to interact with the Table data type. Once again, reload the libraries, add the node to a flow, and execute it. With these changes the node will produce an output table with a single column called foo column containing the values 1, 2, and 3.

Inspect the output by double clicking on the output port of your node. It will open in Sympathy’s internal data viewer.

If you want your output to be a modified version of the input you can use the source method:

import numpy as np

from sympathy.api import node as synode
from sympathy.api.nodeconfig import Ports, Port, Tags, Tag

class AddBarNode(synode.Node):
    """Adds a bar column to a Table."""

    name = 'Add bar column'
    nodeid = 'com.example.boblib.addbar'
    tags = Tags(Tag.Development.Example)

    inputs = Ports([Port.Table('Input Table', name='foo')])
    outputs = Ports([Port.Table('Table with some added bar', name='foobar')])

    def execute(self, node_context):
        inputfile = node_context.input['foo']
        outputfile = node_context.output['foobar']
        outputfile.source(inputfile)
        number_of_rows = inputfile.number_of_rows()
        outputfile.set_column_from_array('bar',
            np.arange(number_of_rows, dtype=int))

All the other basic port data types are also available in the Port class, such as ADAF, Datasource, and Text. Try changing your port to some other type and add it again to a flow (do not forget to reload libraries first) to see the port data type change. You can also just as easily add several input or output ports to a node:

inputs = Ports([Port.Datasource('Input foo file', name='foofile'),
                Port.ADAFs('All the data', name='alldata')])
outputs = Ports([Port.Table('Table with baz', name='baz'),
                 Port.ADAF('The best data', name='outdata')])

Note though that the different data types have different APIs whose references can be found here: Data types.

If you need ports of some type which does not have its own method in Port (such as generic types or lambdas) see Using custom port types.

Adding a configuration GUI

Many of the nodes in the standard library have some configuration settings that affect the details of what the node does when executed. For example in Random Table you can choose how big the generated table should be.

Going back to the original Hello world node, let us now offer the user a choice of what greeting to print.

Parameters are defined in the class variable parameters. Create a new parameters object by calling the function synode.parameters. Then add all the parameters with methods such as set_string. In our example it would look something like this:

from sympathy.api import node as synode
from sympathy.api.nodeconfig import Tags, Tag


class HelloWorldNode(synode.Node):
    """Prints a custom greeting to the node output."""

    name = 'Hello world!'
    description = 'An amazing node!'
    nodeid = 'com.example.boblib.helloworld'
    tags = Tags(Tag.Development.Example)

    parameters = synode.parameters()
    parameters.set_string(
        'greeting',
        value='Hello world!',
        label='Greeting:',
        description='Choose what kind of greeting the node will print.')

    def execute(self, node_context):
        greeting = node_context.parameters['greeting'].value
        print(greeting)

Once again try reloading the library and readding the node to a flow. You will notice that you can now configure the node. A configuration GUI has been automatically created from your parameter definition. As you can see the label argument is shown next to the line edit field and the description and run the node. fargument is shown as a tooltip. Try changing the greeting in the configuration

Parameter gui example

You can add parameters of other types than strings as well by using the methods set_boolean, set_integer, set_float, set_list. Most of them have the same arguments as set_string, but lists are a bit different. A simple example of storing a list might look like this:

parameters.set_list(
    'toppings', label='Pizza toppings',
    description='Choose what toppings you want on your pizza.',
    list=['Cheese', 'Tomato sauce', 'Pineapple',
          'Ham', 'Anchovies', 'Mushrooms'],
    value_names=['Cheese', 'Tomato sauce'],
    editor=synode.editors.multilist_editor())

This list is named “toppings” and has the available options specified by the list argument. The value_names argument specifies which options in the list that are selected by default. The editor argument is used to specify that we want this list to be shown in a list view with multiple selection.

See Parameters for more details or see All parameters example for more examples of how to use all the different parameter types and editors.

Errors and warnings

Any uncaught exceptions that occur in your code will be shown as Exceptions in the error view. The stack traces in the details can be very valuable while developing nodes, but are pretty incomprehensible for most users. Because of this you should always try to eliminate the possibility of such uncaught exceptions. If an error occurs which the node cannot recover from you should instead try to raise an instance of one of the classes defined in sympathy.api.exceptions. Here is an example that uses SyConfigurationError:

from sympathy.api.exceptions import SyConfigurationError
from sympathy.api import node as synode
from sympathy.api.nodeconfig import Tags, Tag

class HelloWorldNode(synode.Node):
    """Prints a custom greeting to the node output."""

    name = 'Hello world!'
    description = 'An amazing node!'
    nodeid = 'com.example.boblib.helloworld'
    tags = Tags(Tag.Development.Example)

    parameters = synode.parameters()
    parameters.set_string(
        'greeting',
        value='Hello World!',
        label='Greeting:',
        description='Choose what kind of greeting the node will print.')

    def execute(self, node_context):
        greeting = node_context.parameters['greeting'].value
        if len(greeting) >= 200:
            raise SyConfigurationError('Too long a greeting!')
        print(greeting)

This will produce a more user friendly error message.

If you simply want to warn the user of something that might be a concern but which does not stop the node from performing its task, use the function sympathy.api.exceptions.sywarn:

from sympathy.api.exceptions import sywarn
from sympathy.api import node as synode
from sympathy.api.nodeconfig import Tags, Tag

class HelloWorldNode(synode.Node):
    """Prints a custom greeting to the node output."""

    name = 'Hello world!'
    description = 'An amazing node!'
    nodeid = 'com.example.boblib.helloworld'
    tags = Tags(Tag.Development.Example)

    parameters = synode.parameters()
    parameters.set_string(
        'greeting',
        value='Hello world!',
        label='Greeting:',
        description='Choose what kind of greeting the node will print.')

    def execute(self, node_context):
        greeting = node_context.parameters['greeting'].value
        if len(greeting) >= 100:
            sywarn("That's a very long greeting. Perhaps too wordy?")
        print(greeting)

See Messages window for more info about how the error view shows different types of output. See the Error example node for another example.

Documenting nodes

Documentation for your library can be built into a convenient html format by sympathy. The automatic node documentation uses docstrings from node classes and description fields (top-level node description, node port descriptions and descriptions of node parameters). Since Sympathy uses Sphinx for producing html documentation for nodes and the platform, it requires docstrings to be written in Sphinx compliant reStructuredText format. See also the Nodes for more information.

Additionally, documentation for other functions and classes can benefit from using numpy docstring format, see A Guide to NumPy/SciPy Documentation.

The documentation can then be built from the command-line:

sympathy doc --library-dir <PATH_TO_NODE_LIB>

For more information about the different command-line options, see Command options.

If you are distributing your library to other users, consider building its documentation yourself and including that with the distributed library. This will save your end-users the hassle of building the documentation themselves.

Reusable nodes

Follow these simple guidelines to make sure that your node is as reusable as possible.

  • Break down the task into the smallest parts that are useful by themselves and write nodes for each of those, instead of writing one monolithic “fix everything” node. Take some inspiration from the Unix philosophy; every node should “do only one thing, and do it well”.

  • Try to work on the most natural data type for the problem that you are trying to solve. When in doubt go with Table since it is the simplest and most widely applicable data type.

  • Do not hard code site specific stuff into your nodes. Instead add preprocessing steps or configuration options as needed.

  • Add documentation for your node, describing what the node does, what the configuration options are, and whether there any constraints on the input data.

  • When you write the code for your node, remember that how you write it can make a huge difference. If others can read and easily understand what your code does it can continue to be developed by others. As a starting point you should try to follow the Python style guide (PEP8) as much as possible.

If your nodes are very useful and do not include any secrets you may be able to donate it to Combine for inclusion in the standard library. This is only possible if the node is considered reusable.