call knime workflow with variables from python

have you ever wanted to use python to execute a knime workflow with globally defined variables? Here's how.

python knime_python_example.py

This knime_python_example.py file won't work out of the box. It's just a template.

You will need to edit and set -workflowFile='/path/to/file.knwf' to wherever your workflow of interest is located and you will have to approriately edit your variables in -workflow.variable with as many variables as your workflow has defined. if want to use variable defaults, you don't need this command. remember -workflow.variable syntax is name,value,type. The knime_python_example.py shows int and String example variables.

Some additional notes:

1. you can swap the file -workflowFile for directory -workflowDir='path/to/directory. Don't forget that to make this work any string needs to be single quoted (').
2. all the other arguments after knime and before your paths etc are just settings I click. it doesn’t open the GUI, it doesn’t save, the workflow is rest, and it closes your terminal upon completion of the workflow
3. a lot of stuff will be printed to your terminal. in my experience when you see ---Registering Weka Editors--- that means you did it correctly!
4. Additional knime command line info can be found here: https://forum.knime.com/t/decent-documentation-for-command-line-execution-with-variables/31680

Cheers.