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Show HN: Pipeflow-PHP – Automate anything with pipelines even non-devs can edit (github.com/marcosiino)
55 points by marcosiino 24 days ago | hide | past | favorite | 9 comments
Hello everyone,

I’ve been building [Pipeflow-php](https://github.com/marcosiino/pipeflow-php), a PHP pipeline engine to automate anything — from content generation to backend and business logic workflows — using core modular stages and custom implemented stages (that can do anything), with the key power of using an easy to reason and read XML to define the pipeline logic, which every actor in a company, even non developers, can understand, maintain and edit.

It’s a *headless engine*: no UI is included, but it's designed to be easily wired into any backend interface (e.g. WordPress admin, CMS dashboard, custom panels), so *even non-developers can edit or configure the logic*.

It surely needs improvements, more core stages to be implemented and more features, but i'm already using it on two websites i've developed.

In future I plan to port it in other languages too.

Feedback (and even contributions) are appreciated :)

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Why I built it

I run a site which every day, via a cron job:

- automatically generates and publish coloring pages using complex logics and with the support of the generative AI,

- picks categories and prompts based on logic defined in a pipeline,

- creates and publishes WordPress posts automatically, every day, without any human intervention.

All the logic is defined in an XML pipeline that's editable via wordpress admin panel (using a wordpress plugin I've developed, which also adds some wordpress related custom stages to Pipeflow). A non-dev (like a content manager) can adjust this automatic content generation logic, for example by improving it, or by changing the themes/categories during holidays — without touching PHP.

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What Pipeflow does

- Define pipelines in *fluent PHP* or *simple, easy understandable XML (even by non developers), directly from your web app admin pages*

- Use control-flow stages like `If`, `ForEach`, `For`

- Execute pipelines manually, via cron, or on any backend trigger which adapts to your business logic

- Build your own UI or editor on top (from a simple text editor to a node based editor which outputs a compatible XML-based configuration to feed to pipeflow)

- Reuse modular “stages” (core and custom ones) across different pipelines



I generally just want to see code or xml


Sure, here is a small quickstart from the docs which show a very basic example of a pipeline, configured both with hardcoded php and with xml configuration:

https://github.com/marcosiino/pipeflow-php/blob/main/DOCUMEN...

In the same documentation you can find a list of the available core stages (which includes the control flow stages), and you can develop your custom stages (in php obviosly) which can then be used in the xml configurations (or php hardcoded pipelines) like reusable piece of puzzles.

Imagine stages which makes custom business logic of your customer web application (get pending carts, get last n days orders, get user feedbacks, generate invoice ) or more generic custom stages (generate pdf, send emails, etc) and imagine allowing using these stages to your web application customer (who manages an ecommerce for example, which maybe is not a developer, but wants to have the freedom to refine or edit some of the workflows, or create new ones)


We don't need more blogs full of AI generated content.


Please don't do this here. If a comment seems unfit for HN, please flag it and email us at hn@ycombinator.com so we can have a look.


The library is not intended for doing it. It allows to automate anything, for example e-commerce workflows, by encapsulating work in custom stages. It’s just a pipeline. The major “selling point” is that the pipelines (workflows) can be written in an easily understandable xml so that even non developers can mantain or edit them. Imagine an ecommerce (or any web application) written for a customer which includes some workflows which runs automatically (or triggered manually). The customer can edit, refine or mantain them by just modifying the pipeline configuration using a reasonable xml (but you can even build a node-base editor, if you want, which produces the xml and configures the pipeline).

The AI content generation is just an example usecase on which I’ve made an experimental website (with some custom stages for AI that i’ve developed privately for now), but pipeflow doesn’t provide any core stage for doing that.


You're in for a ride


Coming next: edit simple, easily understandable (even by kiddies) SQL, directly from your web app (no need for a separate admin page!), and execute it right in your production DB.


hey @marcosiino, HN is not designed for new members to start talking immediately and for this reason all your comments are shadowbanned

pipeflow looks like an interesting project, if you'd like to be debanned, write a short mail to the admin

all the best to you!


Thank you very much, I already wrote them because the post was flagged as spam for error. Now they said they removed the flag, i’ll contact again for the comments, thank you!




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