Visustin - Bulk flowchart

Bulk flowchart requires Visustin Pro Edition.

Save your time with Bulk flowchart. Convert your entire project into flow charts while you take a rest. Bulk charting is ideal for processing a number of source files in a batch. Select the source files you wish to flowchart, then press a button. Visustin saves a chart for each individual file. Bulk flowchart works as if you repeatedly pressed File Open and Save. The charts it produces are similar to what you see in the main window of Visustin.

Steps to flowchart in bulk

Select Bulk flowchart in the File menu
Pick the desired source language
Select the desired source code files. You can select any number of files, such as all source files in a sub-directory tree.
Define the output directory. The charts will be generated in this directory. Visustin will make up the actual filenames for you. Existing files will not be deleted or overwritten.
Select the output file type. This is what files you will get.
Press Run.

If necessary, you can cancel the bulk process by pressing Ctrl+Break.

Output file formats

Individual files: Bulk flowcharting saves a flow chart for each individual source file. Thus, you will get as many flow charts as there are source files. More about file formats.
Multi-image archives: You can optionally save all flow charts in a single file, instead of saving each chart in its own file. More about multi-image formats
Bulk export: Bulk flowchart can export flow charts to Visio, PowerPoint and Word. Just select the appropriate file format (.vsd, .ppt, .doc).
Editor: To create Editor files in a batch, select .flw or .flw.png as the output file format. With the .flw.png format you get quick automated documentation, but you can still edit and fine-tune individual charts later if you wish.

Bulk tips

Drag & drop files from Windows to the Select files to flowchart dialog.

Stalled? Bulk flowcharting may appear to get stalled at times. This may happen with very large source files. In most cases the process is just taking a lot of time due to the size of the chart and Visustin will complete its job after some time. If it doesn't get past of a certain file, try the tricks for large charts for this particular file before running bulk charting again.

Binary source files are not supported. Because of this, bulk charting does not work with PowerScript or the binary file formats of QuickBASIC and REALbasic. Save your code as regular text files before running Bulk flowchart.

Bulk flowchart jobs

Visustin lets you save bulk flowcharting jobs and run them at a later time. Define jobs and run them at night. Run pre-defined jobs from a batch file as a part of your build process. Jobs are the way to run Visustin in unattended mode.

To define a job, bring up the Bulk flowchart window. Select the flowcharting options as if you were going to bulk chart right now. Instead of pressing the Start button, press the Save button. This will create a .vjb file (Visustin JoB file) and store your bulk settings in it.

Run a job: To run a job, use the Open button in the Bulk flowchart window. The saved job will be loaded. Edit the settings and press Start to actually run the job.
Run a command line job: To run a saved job from the command line or a batch file, use the following command line syntax. Visustin will load the job, save the flow charts and quit.
visustin.exe "c:\path\myjob.vjb"

Note: By default, a job file lists the actual source files that were originally selected for the job. As you develop your program further, you will add new source files to your project directory. The new files will not show up on the flowcharting job automatically. To define a job that flowcharts all the source files in your project directory or directories, you need to manually edit the job file to list directory names, not individual files. Fortunately, this is straightforward to accomplish. The instructions for doing this are later on this page.

Creating and editing .vjb job files

Bulk jobs are saved in plain-text .vjb job files. You can edit the files with Notepad or any other plain-text editor. It is easiest to start by saving a .vjb file in the Bulk flowchart window, then edit the file.

Sample .vjb file

[Job]
Language=VB6
OutputPath=c:\bulk
OutputFormat=tif
OutputMulti=False
Recursive=true
Extensions=*.bas;*.frm;*.cls

[Source]
c:\projects\myapp\
c:\projects\myclasses\*.cls
c:\projects\include\general.bas

Job file syntax

Job files should be plain-text ASCII files (ANSI, to be exact). You can edit the file with Notepad, for example. In an operating system that supports Unicode, such as Windows XP, a job file can also be in Unicode format. UTF-8 format is not supported.

There are two sections in the file. The [Job] section defines how the input and output should be performed. The [Source] section lists where the input source code files are to be found.

[Job]	Value	Description
Language	= languagecode	Programming language code of the source files. The language codes equal those used on the command line but without the slash /.
OutputPath	= d:\path	Directory where to save the flow charts. OutputPath must be the name of an existing directory. Existing files will not be overwritten.
OutputFormat	= ext	Output file format. The file format is given as the standard file extension, such as gif, tif, png or vsd. You can use any file format that Visustin saves in, including Visustin-specific formats such as code.gif or code.png. As a special case, OutputFormat=html+gif for HTML with GIF and html+png for HTML with PNG.
OutputMulti	= True\|False	Optional. Default=False. Used when OutputFormat allows both individual image files and multi-image files (tif, for example). To create a multi-image archive, set OutputMulti=True. To create one file per image, set OutputMulti=False.
Recursive	= True\|False	Optional. Default=False. Set Recursive=True to recursively look for files in the given input directories and their sub-directories.
Extensions	= .ext1;.ext2	Optional. Semicolon-separated list of file specifications. This setting affects the Directory name option in the [Source] section. When directory names are given in [Source], the files must match one of the given wildcard specifications here. If you omit Extensions, Visustin uses the default file extensions for the language in question, such as `.c;.cpp` for C/C++ code. To tell what the default extensions are, take a look at the Select files to flowchart dialog (via the Bulk flowchart window). The default extensions are displayed at the bottom-left corner.
[Source]	Value	Description
This section includes a list of files or directories to process. Wildcards *? can be applied to file names, but not to directory names. You can list any number of files and/or directories.
File name	c:\path\code.bas	Process the given file.
File specification	c:\path\*.ext	Process all files that match the wildcards (*?). If Recursive=True, look for files in sub-directories too.
Directory name	c:\path\	Process all suitable files in the given directory. The directory name must end with a backslash \. If Recursive=True, look for files in sub-directories too. The "suitable" files are defined by the Extensions setting in the [Job] section. If Extensions is omitted, Visustin uses the default file extensions for the selected language.
List file	< c:\path\files.lst	Process files listed in a list file (files.lst). A less than sign < indicates a list file. The list file name cannot contain wildcards. The list file is a plain-text file with the same format as the [Source] section, without the [Source] line. In other words, a list file is a simple list of file or directory names, one per line. You can create a list file programmatically to facilitate batch processing. Path names inside the list file are relative to the location of the list file itself. You can even nest list files by using the < syntax inside a list file.

Note: You will not get a warning if files listed in the [Source] section cannot be found on disk.

Absolute path and file names are recommended. Relative path and file names are relative to the .vjb file path. Relative path and file names in a listing file are relative to the listing file path.