In electronics it is quite common to have numbers in parts, and to use numbers pins and components (in the electronics meaning). Therefore I'd like to be able to expess these things in .fbp for MicroFlo.

Example:

right(MyComponent)
'data' -> IN almostright

Expected: Error that trying to attach IIP 'data' to non-existing process 'almostright'

Similar probably happens for port connections

Actual: No error

Visualize lowercases port names. However I had understood from @bergie (maybe I misunderstood) that NoFlo only lowercases port names in generated JSON. I guess it doesn't matter much, as I believe that port names are case-insensitive, but it would be nice to see on the diagram what you actually typed in (same applies to array notation)!

When using Visualize, ENTER both splits lines and starts the display, so you have to make sure the cursor is at the end of the network definition - this is really frustrating, as it is much more natural to make a change and then immediately hit ENTER! It looks as though Visualize needs a Send button!

Is currently in NoFlo. https://github.com/noflo/noflo/blob/master/graph-schema.json
Should be in this project instead.

Needed for things like flowbased/flowtrace#16

We're thinking of doing a FBP syntax REPL for modifying NoFlo graphs. In that case you'll want to do regular operations as you do in FBP, line-by-line:

Foo OUT -> IN Bar

But you'll also want to be able to counter them later. So to remove the connection made above, you could utilize a syntax like:

Foo OUT -X> IN Bar

We've had support for disambiguated INPORT and OUTPORT keywords for years now. It would be good to deprecate the old "we don't know which one this is" EXPORT keyword

It would be convenient sometimes to not have to specify a node identifier when instantiating components.
The typical example encountered in MicroFlo is converting between active=true convention (inside the program) and active=LOW (on the edges of the hardware because that is how the connected electronics works).

E.g.
switch() OUT1 -> IN ia(InvertBoolean) OUT -> IN turnOn(DigitalWrite)
would become:
switch() OUT1-> IN (InvertBoolean) OUT -> IN turnOn(DigitalWrite)

May not be the best palce to ask, but do you guys have syntax highlighting of fbp files in your favorite editors ? I'm using Sublime Text (2/3) and couldn't find an official fbp syntax highlighter. Would make life easier (although it's not top-priority and could be something made by the community).

There doesn't seem to be a supported way to initialize a port with an array.

See my stack overflow question for a code example of my current workaround:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/24092317/noflo-fbp-array-initiallizer

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Currently in FBP connections to ArrayPorts are assigned to indexes based on order in the file.

As noted in noflo/noflo#128 we should also allow specifying indexes in FBP:

Foo OUT[0] -> IN[1] Bar

This causes a problem when using them as graphs since the-graph (somewhere) then duplicates the ports, with the duplicate being named in uppercase.

Please consider maintaining the case of the port names, or changing noflo.graph.loadFBP() to convert them back to uppercase.

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Example:

INPORT=noexist.IN:broken
INPORT=exist.IN:works

exist(foo/Bar)

Expected: Error with message explaining that noexist referenced in inport broken does not exist

'localhost' -> IN instanceMissingComponentName OUT -> (core/Output)

Expected: Error mentioning that process instanceMissingComponentName has no component name defined

Actual: No error

Changing ReadFile process in this example with : read_file, read2file

fbp.parse "'somefile.txt' -> SOURCE ReadFile(ReadFile) OUT -> IN Split(SplitStr)"

-> Ok

fbp.parse "'somefile.txt' -> SOURCE read_file(ReadFile) OUT -> IN Split(SplitStr)"

-> Nok

fbp.parse "'somefile.txt' -> SOURCE read2file(ReadFile) OUT -> IN Split(SplitStr)"

-> Nok

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Example of the graph:

'test 1' -> IN[0] Mux(mux) OUT[0] -> IN Display(console)
'test 2' -> IN[1] Mux OUT[1] -> IN Display

Result:

noflo/fbp/lib/fbp.js:1727
throw new this.SyntaxError(
^
SyntaxError: Expected " " or [a-zA-Z0-9_] but "-" found.

Put a single connection with array ports in a line works fine.

Basically the inverse of parse(). Should round-trip all information losslessly, which might require some additions, particularly node/edge/graph metadata.
Ideally would be able to preserve formatting of editing .fbp files to, but that is secondary.

Requested by @aretecode

As suggested by @jpaulm

c:\threadn\pompiers.fil' -> OPT Lire() OUT -> IN Select() OUT -> IN Ecrire() Select() REJECT -> IN Ecrire2() ... and so on is tough to scan! Should become:

c:\threadn\pompiers.fil' -> OPT Lire OUT -> IN Select OUT -> IN Ecrire, Select REJECT -> IN Ecrire2 ... and so on

The Readme still says that process names without the component specification require empty brackets. This seems to be no longer the case. Could someone change the Readme...? Thanks.

Trying to convert JSON to FBP, I get the following.

fbp out.json > somefile.fbp 
/usr/lib/node_modules/fbp/bin/fbp:25
  return console.log(parser.serialize(fs.readFileSync(file, 'utf-8')));
                            ^

TypeError: parser.serialize is not a function
    at Object.<anonymous> (/usr/lib/node_modules/fbp/bin/fbp:25:29)
    at Module._compile (module.js:570:32)
    at Object.Module._extensions..js (module.js:579:10)
    at Module.load (module.js:487:32)
    at tryModuleLoad (module.js:446:12)
    at Function.Module._load (module.js:438:3)
    at Module.runMain (module.js:604:10)
    at run (bootstrap_node.js:389:7)
    at startup (bootstrap_node.js:149:9)
    at bootstrap_node.js:504:3

I have some (old) NoFlo JSON which has something called "name" within "properties". I guess this can be obtained from the file name, but tools like Visualize accept input from a panel or textarea, so it would be nice to have a convention for specifying the file name, right in the network definition.

In the pre-NoFlo .fbp notation, we could specify xxx: at the beginning of the network, and also use the same convention for subnets, which could be included within the same file, if desired, separated by semi-colons.

Comments, @bergie @jonnor @forresto ?

Visualize doesn't show the port index on the diagram

Having repeated IN/OUT for components that simply have one in and one out seems overly verbose.

Instead of lots of IN/OUT you could simply declare that A -> B -> C would use whatever the 'default' input and output ports are. Could restrict this type of declaration for components with only one in and one out port.

Currently the FBP parser only allows strings to be defined as IIPs, but other types are also necessary.

Examples:

1 -> IN SomeNode
true -> OPEN Gate
['foo', 'bar'] -> IN OtherNode

Example:

name(ComponentA)
shouldbename (ComponentB)

Expected: Either the instance of ComponentB is given identifier 'shouldbename', OR an error is raised that this is invalid.

Actual: The instance of ComponentB gets assigned a random identifier (as if it was an anonymous)

This broke noflo-ui in https://github.com/noflo/noflo-ui/blob/master/graphs/ProjectStorage.fbp#L17, as well as several non-public projects.
Minimal testcase can be found at https://github.com/flowbased/fbp/tree/regression-1.2

@chadrik @ifitzpatrick this broke between 1.1.7 and 1.2.0, ie with your pull request. Please fix.

The parser seems to need blanks around the arrows. They should not be required. Most languages do not require blanks next to special characters

FBP defines automatic ports diagramatically and functionally, but there doesn't appear to be defined support for them in the DSL.

I propose that they be represented by an asterisk in place of an explicit name. This is in line with conventions set by JavaFBP.

I'm currently developing a Python FBP runtime focused on brevity meant to be a building block for more complex architectures. I wrote a PEG based parser for FBP DSL and I'm looking for as many examples as I could find to incorporate them into my test suite. What do you think about a language agnostic repo for test data just like some folks did for TOML:

https://github.com/BurntSushi/toml-test

In that repo you can find lots of valid and invalid test cases, extremely time saving for someone who's writing an encoder/decoder.

The same thing goes for the language specification: snooping around in your projects here on GitHub, I guessed that some language features are obscure to say at least, and a proper language specification is missing. This FBP language repo could become a place where to find a proper grammar (EBNF?), links to known parsers, etc.

For instance for capacity (buffer bounds)

'Hi!' -> IN P1(D1/C1)
P1 OUT -> IN P2(D1/C2)

Declaration and connection could be split to reduce clutter.
Example:

Reader(filesystem/ReadFile) #read the invoices file
ReportGenerator(foo/Reportgen) #generate reports for the invoice
Printer(core/Output) #show results

'invoice.txt' -> IN Reader OUT -> IN ReportGenerator OUT -> IN Printer

Predeclared components without port names can be defaulted to the IN and OUT ports accordingly because they are the most common ports.

So it would look like this:

'invoice.txt' -> Reader -> ReportGenerator -> Printer

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When I do:

# In the graph we first need to define the nodes and the connections between them

Read(filesystem/ReadFile) OUT -> IN Parse(strings/ParseJson) OUT -> IN Extract1(objects/ExtractProperty) OUT -> IN Display(core/Output)

# Configure Extract
'dependencies' -> KEY Extract1
'noflo' -> KEY Extract1

# Start off the graph by sending a filename to the file reader
'package.json' -> IN Read

I get:

DATA -> KEY Extract1() CONN
DATA -> KEY Extract1() DATA
DATA -> KEY Extract1() DISC
DATA -> KEY Extract1() CONN
DATA -> KEY Extract1() DATA
DATA -> KEY Extract1() DISC

what I want is

DATA -> KEY Extract1() CONN
DATA -> KEY Extract1() DATA
DATA -> KEY Extract1() DATA
DATA -> KEY Extract1() DISC

Is there a syntax for it already? According to the tests there is not.

I just spent 40 minutes trying to figure why my graph was not accepted by the FBP parser (telling me the START port doesn't exist).

It seems 'START' cannot be used as an input port of a sub graph, probably because of this :
https://github.com/noflo/noflo/blob/master/src/components/Graph.coffee#L68

Maybe this kind of problem should be notified to the user more clearly with a message like 'Sorry $NAME is not a valid name for a port, please rename this port.'

Based on the behaviour of Visualize, it seems that newlines are only accepted at end of clause. I feel this should be part of the spec for the .fbp notation - if you agree, it would be good if someone could add it to the Readme. Thanks.

I might be wrong, but it seems the parser cannot deal with negative numbers :

-1 -> BEGIN LastGraph(objects/SliceArray)

fails with :

Fatal error: Expected " ", "#", "'", "EXPORT=", "INPORT=", "OUTPORT=", [A-Z.0-9_], [\n\r\u2028\u2029] or [a-zA-Z0-9_] but "-" found.

FBP file with

# !runtime msgflo

should become in the JS/JSON representation

properties.environment.runtime: "foo"