Flow Variables Tab - hide Default node settings internals?

s.roughley · October 11, 2019, 11:41am

I’d like to suggest a couple of enhancements to the NodeSettingsPane flow variables tab…

Show the full name of the settings key - the truncation means you have to mouse over the settings to see what it is - particularly difficult for nodes with many settings (and worse if you follow the developer documentation example and start all the keys with something like CFG_KEY_...!)
When using the DefaultNodeSettingsPane, with the convenience that comes with it using the standard DialogComponents, could the ‘_Internals’ parts of the tree be hidden? (I’ve tried since pretty much the first time I used KNIME to think of a way to ever use those, and failed! )

The picture shows both aspects:

I think the first probably would require some modification of ConfigEditTreeRenderer, and the second modification of the #recursiveAdd() method of ConfigEditTreeModel - probably in here where the other _Internals settings are already being hidden:

github.com

knime/knime-core/blob/da17be0c6253dba44246be477f439b4525423941/org.knime.core/src/eclipse/org/knime/core/node/config/ConfigEditTreeModel.java#L231-L244


// determine if the child is an internal config
final boolean childIsInternals =
    !childVariableValueHasGrandchildren && childKey.endsWith(SettingsModel.CFGKEY_INTERNAL);

// if the child is an internals config, don't add it to the tree and don't consider its children
// the only exception is if the child has descendants in the variable tree
if (!childIsInternals) {
    final ConfigEditTreeNode childTreeNode =
        new ConfigEditTreeNode(childValue, childArraySubtype, treeNode.m_version);
    treeNode.add(childTreeNode);
    if (childValue.getType().equals(ConfigEntries.config) && childArraySubtype == null) {
        recursiveAdd(childTreeNode, (ConfigBase)childValue, childVariableValue);
    }
}

I noticed looking on github that this class has had quite a bit of work around here recently, including this:

github.com

knime/knime-core/blob/da17be0c6253dba44246be477f439b4525423941/org.knime.core/src/eclipse/org/knime/core/node/config/ConfigEditTreeModel.java#L123-L126


/**
 * AP 4.1 - introduction of Boolean, Long, and array flow variables
 */
V_2019_09_13(2);

which looks… Nice - very nice, assuming it means what I believe it to mean

Steve

s.roughley · October 11, 2019, 11:47am

Update - After looking at those changes made in ConfigEditTreeModel a bit more carefully, I wondered whether point 2 was already fixed, so I just dowloaded the nightly build and realised that they do indeed fix point 2 - very nice - Thank you team KNIME!

I couldn’t yet see any route to the new flow variable types, but I guess that will come…

Steve

ana_ved · October 16, 2019, 11:48pm

Hi @s.roughley

Thank you for your comments!

Indeed, point number 2 will be part of next release.

For point number 1, we do have this feature request in our internal ticketing system. I am adding this thread as +1 for more visibility.

Cheers,
Ana

tobias.koetter · July 15, 2020, 10:13am

Hi @s.roughley,
I’m happy to announce that long flow variable names are now much nicer displayed in KNIME Analytics Platform 4.2 which was released on Monday.
Bye
Tobias