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Passing Data between Components

There are two ways of passing data between components: through ports and by utilizing the Xircuits context (ctx). The guide below will walk you through a simple example using ports.

Passing Data via Ports​

Passing data via ports is as simple as declaring the port variable as InArg or OutArg, which will then be rendered by the Xircuits canvas.

  1. Start with a simple component definition that prints Hello.

    Code Snippet
    from xai_components.base import InArg, OutArg, InCompArg, Component, xai_component

    @xai_component(color="red")
    class HelloOutComponent(Component):

        def __init__(self):

            self.done = False

        def execute(self, ctx) -> None:

            username = "Xircuits"
            print("Hello " + username + " from HelloOutComponent!")
            
            self.done = True
    Video


  2. Declare an outPort with type OutArg that passes a string. Is it also a good practice to specify it as empty when you initialize in __init__(self). Finally to pass the data to the next components, explicitly set the port value in the execute() method, shown in #(3).

    Code Snippet
    from xai_components.base import InArg, OutArg, InCompArg, Component, xai_component

    @xai_component(color="red")
    class HelloOutComponent(Component):
        
        outport_example: OutArg[str] #(1)

        def __init__(self):

            self.outport_example = OutArg.empty() #(2)
            self.done = False

        def execute(self, ctx) -> None:

            username = "Xircuits"
            print("Hello " + username + " from HelloOutComponent!")

            self.outport_example.value = username #(3)
            self.done = True
    Video


  3. Create another Xircuits component has an InPort. As with the previous component, declare the type as InArg which takes in a str type. To access the data passed from the port, you can simply call it via self.port_name.value as shown in #(4).

    Code Snippet
    @xai_component(color="red")
    class HelloInComponent(Component):
        
        inport_example: InArg[str]

        def __init__(self):

            self.inport_example = InArg.empty()
            self.done = False

        def execute(self, ctx) -> None:
            
            username = self.inport_example.value #(4)

            print("Hello " + username + " from HelloInComponent!")

            self.done = True
    Video

Notes:​

  • An inPort can also be linked to a Literal or a Hyperparameter component given the correct data type.
  • Declaring the port type as any will bypass the port type check.

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