digitalore / flowsbuilder

Flows Builder - an alternative GUI for the ESH/openHAB2 automation engine

Flows Builder

An experimental GUI to build flows compiled into rules for the automation engine embedded in Eclipse SmartHome / openHAB 2.0.

IMPORTANT: This app is experimental, and not part of Eclipse SmartHome or the official openHAB 2 distribution. Don't use the ESH or openHAB issue trackers for problems related to this app!

Getting started

• Drop the compiled .jar in your distribution's addons directory;
• Enable the experimental rule engine in Paper UI, Addons > Misc
• Launch Flows Builder from the dashboard
• Design your flow: drag and drop nodes from the toolbox on the left - add a trigger first, then conditions and actions; unlike simple rules, conditions might follow actions, and have an "else "path. Click on nodes and configure them as required in the right pane.
• Save it on the server with the save button (Ctrl+S or Meta+S work too) - give it a name if asked.
• Try to "build" your flow to check its validity by clicking the "Check" button or with the Flow > Build only menu, if there is any error it will be reported in the build output pane. If successful, one or more rules will be built, but not deployed yet to the rule engine - this is your chance to review what's being done. You can click the small "View" link in the build output pane after a successful build to get the JSON output of the rules resulting from the compilation of your flow.
• Click the "Publish" button or the Flow > Build and publish menu to deploy the rules built from the flow - if there are previous rules existing, they will be removed first.
• You can also unpublish the rules with the "unpublish" button or the Flow > Unpublish menu

Not supported

• Merged paths (and a fortiori loops); this includes multi-trigger rules even though they're allowed by the engine
• Else path for conditions not in the core bundle - this implies knowing how to "negate" the conditions, which is hardcoded in the client for now (dirty hack to address)
• Undocumented features of the engine like rule templates, rule parameters etc.

Missing features

• Check for dirtyness to avoid data loss if the flow is not saved, for instance when switching flows or closing the window
• Import from file or from an existing rule
• Snap to grid
• Duplicate, copy-paste nodes
• Undo/redo engine
• ...