Overriding flow terminals

Flow Terminals can be overridden when being invoked directly through the REST Runtime.

The query parameters input, output, and for Flow Output Terminals return control how these overrides work.

  • Overriding Flow Input Terminals - Flow Input Terminals are overridden through the input query parameter by specifying which terminals should be overridden, what connection type should be used, and what the command line should be. The command line format is shown here:

    <terminal number>;<connection type>;<command line>

    Be aware that commas separate overrides for different terminals. Also note that any commas or semicolons in the command line must be escaped with a backslash (\). For example, if there was a flow called TestFlow with two Flow Input Terminals, in order to pass data directly to the first terminal using the “Echo” connection type (which is “BUF” internally) and for the second one to read a specific file, the query parameter would look like that shown here:

    {host}:{port}/hip-rest/v2/run/TestFlow?input=1;BUF;This is my data,2;FILE;fileToRead.txt

  • Overriding Flow Output Terminals - By default, Flow Output Terminals are automatically overridden to return their data in the HTTP response. This means that any terminals set as Flow Terminals will return data through the HTTP response instead of what it was configured to do, such as to write to a file or a database. To prevent this, the return query parameter can be given any valid value such as nothing, status, or log which will result in not overriding any of the outputs. The query parameter output can also be used, which has the same format as input for Flow Input Terminals, and can be used to override specific terminals. For example:

    {host}:{port}/hip-rest/v2/run/TestFlow?output=1;FILE;fileToWrite.txt