Hi Daniel, My apologies! I misunderstood what your question was about. You are correct, the required inputs are defined when the workflow is created. For tools that accept a variable number of inputs, when that tool is added to a workflow, the run-time parameters, including expected inputs, are defined. Did you have a particular tool in mind? We can ask Dannon for some suggestions/comments if you want to share your ideas about how this sort of processing would flow. I am glad you wrote back. Please send more details if you want and we can try to offer more (better!) help, Best, Jen Galaxy team On 3/6/12 1:01 AM, Daniel Sobral wrote:

Hi Jennifer,

Thanks for the reply. However, my question was not about building tools. My question was about building a workflow (using the workflow editor with existing tools), as a user of galaxy.

Using the workflow editor, when I create a workflow using a tool that allows a variable number of inputs, it seems that I have to define the number of inputs during workflow creation and not when I run the workflow. I was just asking if it would be feasible to have a variable number of inputs (only defined when a running instance of a workflow is created). It feels to me that the answer is no.

Thanks again, Daniel

On Mon 05 Mar 2012 05:56:16 PM WET, Jennifer Jackson wrote:

...

Hello Daniel,

Examining existing tools that have multiple/optional inputs can be a good way to see how this is done. One example is the tool: "NGS: QC and manipulation -> Manipulate FASTQ".

The 'Manipulate FASTQ' tool source is here: http://bitbucket.org/galaxy/galaxy-central/src/e58a87c91bc4/tools/fastq/

fastq_manipulation.py fastq_manipulation.xml

The tool tag set is defined in this wiki; http://wiki.g2.bx.psu.edu/Admin/Tools/Tool%20Config%20Syntax

See<repeat>,<conditional>, and<when> for more details and examples.

Questions about tools are best sent to the galaxy-dev@bx.psu.edu mailing list (the galaxy-user list is primarily for questions about data/tools usages on the main public instance). I am going to forward your question over there so that the development community can add to my reply in case they have a simpler way of doing this or other advice.

Best,

Jen Galaxy team

On 3/5/12 7:32 AM, Daniel Sobral wrote:

...

Hi,

I wanted to build a workflow where the first step would be a tool that can have a variable number of inputs (e.g. a series). It seems that I need to predefine apriori the number of inputs to give to the tool.

Is there a way to define the number of inputs at runtime? E.g. a series-like input?

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