ob-dataflow

This package lets you write dataflow diagrams in the syntax of dataflow with Org Babel. It depends on dataflow and GraphViz dot to produce images from plain text.

Features

At present, this library only supports dataflow diagrams (DFD). Dataflow itself supports dataflow diagrams and sequence diagrams, but the latter is not supported yet. You can use PlantUML for that task, and there is a built-in support for Org Babel.

Installation

To use this package, you have to install the following stuffs:

• dataflow-diagram-mode, which is not on MELPA yet
• dataflow executable
• dot executable of GraphViz for producing the final image

GraphViz is available for most popular Linux distributions.

Dataflow is less common, and it is written in Haskell. I have packaged the program in Nix which is available in my forked repository, so you can install it using Nix:

git clone -b nix-flake https://github.com/akirak/dataflow.git
cd dataflow
nix-env -if .

Alternatively, you can add github:akirak/dataflow/nix-flake to your flake and use the default package of the flake. For details, see the documentation of Nix flakes.

Usage

The following is an example source block:

#+begin_src dataflow :file "dfd-example.png"
  diagram {
    title = "Webapp"
  
    /* Some comment about this... */
    threats = `
  No particular threats at this point.
  
                                     It's **extremely** safe.`
  
    boundary browser {
      title = "Browser"
  
      function client {
        title = "Client"
      }
    }
  
    boundary aws {
      title = "Amazon AWS"
  
      function server {
        title = "Web Server"
      }
      database logs {
        title = "Logs"
      }
    }
    io analytics {
      title = "Google Analytics"
    }
  
    client -> server {
      operation = "Request /"
      description = `User navigates with a browser to see some content.`
    }
    server -> logs {
      operation = "Log"
      data = `The user
  IP address.`
      description = `Logged to a ELK stack.`
    }
    server -> client {
      operation = "Response"
      data = "User Profile"
      description = `The server responds with some HTML.`
    }
    analytics <- client {
      operation = "Log"
      data = "Page Navigation"
      description = `The Google Analytics plugin sends navigation
  data to Google.`
    }
  }
#+end_src

You can customize the output by setting ob-dataflow-dot-arguments. For a list of supported options, see the documentation of GraphViz.