NextflowForge: A Beginner-Friendly Nextflow Workflow Generator

Welcome to NextflowForge, an intuitive web-based tool designed to help you create Nextflow workflows without needing any prior experience. This app guides you step-by-step through setting up parameters, defining processes, and configuring environments for bioinformatics and other computational workflows.

📖 Table of Contents

1. Introduction
2. Getting Started
3. Setting Up the Environment
4. Running the Application
5. Contributing
6. Issues

📝 Introduction

NextflowForge is a Streamlit-based application that simplifies the process of creating Nextflow workflows. You can configure workflow parameters, define processes, manage environments, and set output configurations with just a few clicks.

🚀 Getting Started

To get the NextflowForge app running on your local machine, follow the steps below. These instructions are designed for absolute beginners, so no prior experience is needed!

Prerequisites

• Make sure you have Conda installed on your system. If not, follow the instructions on the Conda website to install it.

🛠 Setting Up the Environment

To ensure that you have all the necessary packages and dependencies, we will use a conda environment. Follow the steps below:

Step 1: Create a Conda Environment

Open your terminal (or Anaconda Prompt on Windows) and navigate to the directory where your project files are located. Use the following command to create a new Conda environment:

conda env create -f environment.yaml

This command will read the environment.yaml file and set up a new environment named nextflowforge with all the required dependencies.

Step 2: Activate the Environment

Once the environment is created, activate it using the following command:

conda activate nextflowforge

Step 3: Install Additional Dependencies (if needed)

If you need to install any additional Python packages, you can do so using:

pip install <package-name>

🎮 Running the Application

Now that the environment is set up, you can run the NextflowForge app using Streamlit:

1. Make sure you are in the correct directory where the NextflowForge.py file is located.
2. Run the following command:

streamlit run NextflowForge.py

3. A new browser window should open automatically. If not, open your web browser and navigate to the address displayed in the terminal (typically http://localhost:8501).

🤝 Contributing

If you want to contribute to the project, feel free to fork the repository and submit a pull request. Contributions, suggestions, and improvements are always welcome!

🐞 Issues

If you encounter any problems or have questions, please raise an issue in the GitHub repository. We are here to help!

Happy workflow building! ⚙️