FLOWX.AI Documentation
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FlowX Designer
FlowX Engine
Core Extensions
Integrations
Notifications plugin
Creating a custom integration
Creating integrations for the FLOWX platform is pretty straightforward, you can use your preferred technology in order to write the custom code for them. The only constraint is that they need to be able to send and receive message to / from the Kafka cluster.
Steps for creating an integration
- Create a Microservice (we'll refer to it as an Adapter) that can listen for and react to Kafka events, using your preferred tech stack. Add custom logic for handling the received data from Kafka and obtaining related info from legacy systems. And finally, send the data back to Kafka.
Here's the startup code for a Java Connector Microservice:
GitHub - flowx-ai/quickstart-connector
GitHub
- Add the related configuration in the process definition, you will have to add a message send action in one of the node in order to send the needed data to the adapter.
- When the response from the custom integration is ready, send it back to the engine, keep in mind, your process will wait in a receive message node.
How to manage Kafka Topics
Don't forget, the engine is configured to consume all the events on topics that start with a predefined topic path (ex. flowx.in.*)
- you will need to configure this topic pattern when setting up the Engine
- and make sure to use it when sending messages from the Adapters back to the Engine.
- all Kafka headers received by the Adapter should be sent back to the Engine with the result.
How to build and Adapter
Adapters should act as a light business logic layer that:
- Converts data from one domain to another (date formats, list of values, units etc)
- Adds information that are required by the integration but are not important for the process (a flag, generates a GUID for tracing etc)
Keep in mind that your are in an event driven architecture and the communication between the engine and the adapter is asyncronous. The adapters will need to be designed in such a way that they do not bloat the platform. Depending on the communication type between the adaptor and the legacy system you might need to also add custom implementation for load balancing requests, scaling the adapter and such.
In order to be able to easily trace the process flow, a minimal setup for Jaeger tracing should be added to custom Adapters.
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Last modified 17d ago