Search & Replace as well as Copy & Paste Node Settings

Hi,

I’d like to suggest to integrate a Search & replace feature for node settings. I.e. I have many identical nodes, whenever a Line Plot, an Image Writer or more common ones, and I’d like to adjust one or multiple settings like image width and height of the image writer being steered through a variable.

In my case using reporting loops, which could simplify the workflow, is rather complex for multiple reasons. Changing all settings for many nodes manually is failure prone and a chore (I just did that).

Copy & Paste Node Settings
I can imagine an approach like the following:

  1. Right click on Source Node
  2. Show Dialogue to selectively or as a whole copy node settings
  3. Right Click on Destination Node
  4. Paste Node Settings

In case of variables being assigned that are not available, the current default process would be triggered.

Being able to combine the above described process with a bulk paste would be splendid! Though, Knimes’ node search then must be able to also search withing components but only top to bottom to have a certain level of control which nodes to bulk reconfigure.

Search & Replace Node Settings
Now the possibly more complex scenario of Search & Replace. That would require a dedicated dialogue to first select the node, like GrouBy, in question.

In the second step all possible options would be listed pretty much as you’d configure a node. You’d then be able to switch i.e. from manual to Wildcard or RegEx filtering of columns and make your adjustments.

The third step would be to list all found nodes, grouping them by their level / parent component to easily select which to update and then submit the bulk replace of the chosen settings.

Best
Mike

I support this a lot as settings might differ across countries and workflows maybe passed down from a developer to a simple user just replacing a deprecated node with a new one might give unexpected yet long time unnoticed results. Beside that the options in the settings of the old and new variant of the same node do sometimes widly differ so its hard for a simple user to get to the same settings.