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Build a flow

This page covers the tasks of building and editing a flow. Flows are built in the console only: the HTTP API can run a flow, but not create or change one. For a first flow from start to finish, follow Build your first flow; for what each task does, see Flow tasks.

Create a flow

On the account or group page that should own the flow, click New → Flow. Choose the Owner, enter a Flow name and click Create flow. The flow builder opens.

Creating a flow in a group takes the Create flows permission there.

Add a task

Drag the task type from the Tasks tab of the Flow elements panel onto the canvas. The search box at the top of the panel filters the list.

To configure the task, click its title on the card; its settings open on the right. To remove it, click Delete at the bottom of its settings.

Choose what a task reads and writes

A task's inputs and output are set on its card, not in its settings.

  1. Click Select an input... or Select an output... on the card.
  2. Choose the Type: the kinds offered are the ones that task accepts.
  3. Fill in Account and the name fields — or click an item under Reuse a selector to use one that another task in the flow already names.
  4. For a dataset or graph that does not exist yet, type its name and pick Add "…" from the list; the card marks it NEW until a run creates it.
  5. Click Save.

To take the value from a variable instead, click $ beside the field.

Set the order

Drag from the circle on the right edge of one card to the circle on the left edge of another. The second task then waits for the first to finish.

  • To run tasks in parallel, leave them unconnected, or connect one task to several.
  • To make a task wait for several others, connect all of them to it.
  • To remove a connection, click it and press Delete.

If the builder reports that the order of two tasks could influence the output, they both touch the same dataset and nothing orders them; connect them in the order you mean. Why.

Branch on a condition

  1. Add a Decision task and connect the task before it.
  2. In its settings, add the Conditions: each compares two values with = or !=, usually a variable — one the flow defines, or one a Set variables task set — against a fixed value.
  3. On the card, each condition has its own circle on the right edge, and so does the else branch. Drag from each to the first task of that branch.
  4. Where the branches meet again, add an Or task. Connect the last task of each branch to it; connecting to its free circle starts a new group. The Or task continues once every task in any one group has finished.

A Stop run task at the end of a branch ends the run there, as aborted or failed.

Use a saved query

In a Construct query, Select query or SPARQL update task, set Query location to saved query and pick the query under Saved Query. If the query has API variables, give each a value under Query variables: fixed, or a flow variable.

Without a version, the task runs the query's latest version, so saving a new version of the query changes what the flow does.

Save, and see what stops a run

Click Save at the top of the builder. A flow can be saved while it is unfinished.

The icon in the canvas's bottom-right corner shows a green check when the flow can run, or the number of problems that prevent it. Click it for the list.

Go back to an earlier version

Every save is kept.

  1. Open ⋮ → Version history.
  2. Pick the revision and click Load revision. It opens in the builder.
  3. Click Save to make it the current version, or leave the page without saving to discard it.

Copy and paste tasks

Tasks copy through the clipboard, so they can go to another place in the same flow, to another flow, or to a flow on another TriplyDB instance.

  1. Select the tasks: click one, Shift-drag a box around several, or press Ctrl/⌘+A for all of them.
  2. Press Ctrl/⌘+C. The connections between the selected tasks are copied with them.
  3. Open the flow to paste into — in another tab or on another instance, if you like — and press Ctrl/⌘+V. The tasks are pasted where the pointer is.
  4. Save the flow.

Pasted tasks keep their settings exactly, including the accounts, datasets and saved queries they name. On another instance those may not exist, so check each task's inputs and outputs. Variables the tasks use are not copied: the builder names any that the flow is missing, to add on the Variables tab. Masked values are never copied; add them on the Masked values page.

To copy a whole flow to another instance, create an empty flow there, then select all, copy and paste.

Copy, rename, share or delete a flow

All four are in the builder's ⋮ menu.

  • Copy makes a copy under another account or group on the same instance; choose it under To. To copy to another instance, use copy and paste. The copy has the same tasks and variables, and masked values with the same names but no values: fill them in on its Masked values page. Runs, presets and schedules are not copied. The copy's tasks still read and write the same datasets as the original, so change their inputs and outputs if the copy should work on data of its own.
  • Rename changes the flow's name.
  • Access control makes the flow Private or Internal. See Access levels.
  • Delete removes the flow, with its runs and versions.