How to Upload and Start Flux Workflows from the Command Line

It's really easy to upload Flux workflows — and even start them — from the command line. Just use Flux's REST APIs right from the command line, without any need for coding or scripting.

Here's how you do it.

Upload Flux Workflow

curl -F "file=@template.ffc" --user 'username:password'
http://localhost:7186/cluster/repositoryFlowCharts/upload

This command (all one line) uploads the template workflow file template.ffc from your local file system to your Flux cluster.

• curl is the venerable command line tool, available on most Unix systems.
• template.ffc is the name of your workflow file to be uploaded.
• username:password are your security credentials.
• The http://localhost:7186 portion of the URL is the network location of your Flux operations console.
• The remainder of that URL is the REST endpoint for Flux's REST API.
• The result for a successful upload is HTTP status 200. Failed uploads results in an HTTP status 400 message.

Upload Flux Workflow Using Alternate Name

You can also explicitly change the template name of a file upload part by using the filename property, like this:

curl -F "file=@child.ffc;filename=child template v1" --user 'username:password'
http://localhost:7186/cluster/repositoryFlowCharts/upload

This naming technique allows you to maintain multiple revisions of the same template workflow in the repository.

Start Flux Workflow

To start a workflow template instance from the repository, use this command:

curl -d "namespace=/ingest" --user 'admin:admin'
http://localhost:7186/cluster/repositoryFlowCharts/start

• An instance of the repository workflow "/ingest" will be started within the Flux cluster.