Setting several inputs is not intuitive

[ambroiseb]

I made a custom plugin with 2 inputs of type ikomia.dataprocess.CImageIO().
I tried to set both inputs this way:

from ikomia.dataprocess.workflow import Workflow
import numpy as np

# Init your workflow
wf = Workflow()

img = np.random.randint(0, 256, (400, 400, 3), dtype=np.uint8)
mask = np.random.randint(0, 256, (400, 400, 1), dtype=np.uint8)

plugin = wf.add_task(name="test_plugin", auto_connect=True)

wf.set_image_input(array=img, index=0)
wf.set_image_input(array=mask, index=1) #this line does nothing

wf.run()

Only the input of index 0 has been passed to the workflow.
A correct way of filling the input 1 of my plugin would have been :

from ikomia.dataprocess.workflow import Workflow
import numpy as np

# Init your workflow
wf = Workflow()

img = np.random.randint(0, 256, (400, 400, 3), dtype=np.uint8)
mask = np.random.randint(0, 256, (400, 400, 1), dtype=np.uint8)

plugin = wf.add_task(name="test_plugin", auto_connect=False)

wf.connect_tasks(wf.root(), plugin, [(0,0), (1,1)])

wf.set_image_input(array=img, index=0)
wf.set_image_input(array=mask, index=1) #this time it will set the input correctly

wf.run()

The first code did not work as expected because auto_connect=True linked root with the plugin test_plugin. But root has by default only 1 input, so when wf.set_image_input is called, it can only set input for index 0.
The good way is to disable auto_connect and make connections between tasks with wf.connect_tasks.

To put it in a nutshell, the behavior of auto_connect=True is not explained and can lead to unexpected mistakes.