Provided Functions

As described previously, flows can use provided functions provided by the flow runner app (e.g. flowrcli) and by flow libraries.

However, a flow can also provide its own functions (a definition, for the compiler, and an implementation, for the runtime).

The process references section describes the algorithm for finding the function's files (definition and implementation) using relative paths within a flow file hierarchy.

Using relative paths means that flows are "encapsulated" and portable (by location) as they can be moved between directories, files systems and systems/nodes and the relative locations of the provided functions allow them to still be found and the flow compiled and ran.

Examples of Provided Functions

The flowr crate has two examples that provide functions as part of the flow:

Reverse Echo in the folder flowr/examples/reverse-echo - a simple example that provides a function to reverse a string
Mandlebrot in the folder flowr/examples/mandlebrot - provides two functions:
- pixel_to_point to do conversions from pixels to points in 2D imaginary coordinates space
- escapes to calculate the value of a point in the mandlebrot set

What a provided function has to provide

In order to provide a function as part of a flow the developer must provide:

Function definition file

Definition of the function in a TOML file.
Example escapes.toml
The same as any other function definition it must define:

function - field to show this is a function definition file and provide the function's name
source - the name of the implementation file (relative path to this file)
type - to define what type of implementation is provided ("rust" is the only supported value at this time)
input- the function's inputs - as described in IOs
output- the function's outputs - as described in IOs
docs - Documentation markdown file (relative path)
Example escapes.md

The 'flow' book