Mechanism for providing variable inputs to workflows

[applio]

Greg Landrum originally wrote: We also need some way to provide variable inputs to the workflow. Is that best done: wf.set_variable_inputs(**kwargs)

[applio]

Should we implement workflow-wide variables? Should we implement container variable node inputs?

[scapuzzi]

Hi Davin and Greg: first of all let me say thank you for all the great work you have done on this package (and elsewhere, of course). I recently came across this post discussing variables in the knimepy package and I for one would greatly benefit. I frequently share workflows with my colleagues to run in batch mode and I will wrap the knime execution in a more recognizable python script (this is just a basic example; I have more sophisticated command line scripts that input the variables). So I can currently pass variables that way, but currently I can't integrate variables into python directly, which would go along way in (1) leverage workflows and exploiting data generated in KNIME and (2) having more python saavy users get on board with working with KNIME, which has been a barrier in my experience. The implementation of workflow-wide variables available in batch mode and the container variable inputs would be hugely beneficial for users like me who are both knime and python literate and then I could get more people on board! Thank again! =Stephen=