convert the python dictionary output into a flowchart

Question

I have a file (see status variable in the code below) that I want to convert into a flowchart (attached). My python script converts "status" into a dictionary. How do I convert that dictionary into a flowchart or a graphic? my code:

status = """
Object car {
Name honda;
From Richland;
To Seattle;
Distance 160;
Configuration road_travel;
}

Object bus {
Name greyhound;
From pasco;
To richland;
Distance 15;
Configuration road_travel;
}

Object aeroplane {
Name united;
From miami_airport;
To pasco;
Distance 1000;
Configuration air_travel;
}

Object train {
Name gas_train;
From beach;
To miami_airport;
Distance 30;
Configuration train_travel;
}
"""
sale_number = ''

sales = collections.defaultdict(list)

for line in status.split('\n'):
    line = line.strip()
    if line.startswith("set"):
         continue
    elif (line.startswith("Object") or line.startswith("object")):
         sale_number = line.split(' ')[1].strip()
    elif not line or line.isspace() :
         continue
    else:
         # you can also use a regular expression here
         sales[sale_number].append(line.split())

for sale in sales:
    print sale+str(dict(sales[sale][:-1]))

and this generates:

car{'To': 'Seattle;', 'Configuration': 'road_travel;', 'From': 'Richland;', 'Name': 'honda;', 'Distance': '160;'}
train{'To': 'miami_airport;', 'Configuration': 'train_travel;', 'From': 'beach;', 'Name': 'gas_train;', 'Distance': '30;'}
aeroplane{'To': 'pasco;', 'Configuration': 'air_travel;', 'From': 'miami_airport;', 'Name': 'united;', 'Distance': '1000;'}
bus{'To': 'richland;', 'Configuration': 'road_travel;', 'From': 'pasco;', 'Name': 'greyhound;', 'Distance': '15;'}

and I want to convert the above python output into a picture that looks something like below. I don't want to do it manually using Giffy or MS-Visio because my practical cases have about 1000 objects (this example has 4 objects in "status")

Answer 1

Focusing just on converting your weirdly-formatted status string into a dict is hard enough couldn't you have it in a more sensible, popular format like JSON?

import re
def Status2dict(status):
    result = {}
    current = {}
    lines = status.splitlines()
    for line in lines:
        line = line.strip()
        if not line: 
            continue
        mo = re.match(r'Object (\w+) {', line)
        if mo:
            curk = mo.group(1)
            current = {curk: {}}
        elif re.match('}', line):
            result.update(current)
            current = {}
        else:
            mo = re.match(r'(\w+)\s+([\w\s]+);', line)
            if not mo:
                raise ValueError('cannot match {!r}'.format(line))
            current[curk][mo.group(1)] = mo.group(2)
    if current:
        result.update(current)
    return result

import pprint    
pprint.pprint(Status2dict(status))

This code tries to be marginally robust on small variations from the inferred syntax, you may want to dial that up or down, depending. But, it should be better than nothing.

Answer 2

If you already got the code converting to dot file, you can use the tk export of graphviz to visualise your graph on a tkinter canvas. You could give a look at this other question for other libraries.

dot -Ttk output tcl code like this

# a
$c create oval 5.33 53.33 77.33 5.33 -fill white -width 1 -outline black -tags {1node1}
$c create text 41.33 30.3 -text {a} -fill black -font {"Times" 14} -tags {0node1}
# c
$c create oval 53.33 149.33 125.33 101.33 -fill white -width 1 -outline black -tags {1node2}
$c create text 89.33 126.3 -text {c} -fill black -font {"Times" 14} -tags {0node2}
#(...)

You can display it on a tkinter canvas by calling the tcl interpreter as in this example:

from Tkinter import *
import subprocess

graph = "digraph g { a-> c ; b -> c ; c -> d }"

ps = subprocess.Popen(('dot', '-Ttk'),stdin=subprocess.PIPE, stdout=subprocess.PIPE)
out, err = ps.communicate(input=graph)

canvas = Canvas()
canvas.pack(expand=YES, fill=BOTH)

#the output of graphiz assume thazt the canvas in variable $c
out = "set c .{}\n".format(canvas._name) + out
#tk.eval expect command one by one
map(canvas.tk.eval, out.split("\n"))

canvas.mainloop()