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FlowMate enables data synchronisation across a variety of applications. To achieve this goal we are using modular components which are implemented individually for each API or desired function. These components are capable of passing data from one to another, allowing you to organise them in flows to pass data between systems with ease.
A Component is a lightweight assortment of functions packaged as a docker image. FlowMate runs these images as containerised applications, pass data into them, and execute the component’s provided functions.
A Connector is our term for a particular kind of component, and generally the most common one. It’s a component specifically created for communicating with the API of an external system. You can use a connector built for one system to fetch data from it, and then use a connector for another system to push that data into that system.
Navigate to the Connectors page via the menu or the button on the dashboard. You will see all available standard Connectors. When you click on one you can explore more details, like Triggers & Actions or what Auth Type the application uses.
Triggers and Actions are the part of a connector that defines what you can actually do. Triggers and Actions are functions that are specifically adapted to each application's API. Those functions are defined per endpoint of such API and can interact with them.
Triggers are generally used as the starting point for an integration flow and pull data from an endpoint. So most GET endpoints would be triggers.
Actions are functions that push data or perform an action on an API like deleting data. They usually require some input from previous steps so cannot be used a starting point for your integration flows.
Although Triggers and Actions are the functions you will directly interact with the most, connectors contain several other functions. Those might be only executed in the background, but are still important to know about if you are interested in the technical details. If you want to dive in deeper, please make sure to check out the open source code examples and documentation (→ GitHub). Here is a brief overview:
authentication
Handles the authentication necessary for taking privileged actions on the API, such as posting login data to the application and receiving an access token. This may not be necessary if the API allows for long-lived API keys or bearer tokens that can be passed on to the connector directly. You can see the supported Auth method of a connector on the right hand side of connector details page.
transformation
The transform function is responsible to semantically transform an incoming JSON object into another JSON object. In order for connectors to effectively communicate with one another, they need to transform that data before passing it on. The mapping of the schemas is part of the flow template creation.