foam3

Exporting (“Lifting”) Flows

When you build or edit a Reflow flow in the running app, it lives in the flowDAO on the server. To capture it — to check it into source control, move it between environments, or hand it to someone else — you “lift” it out of the DAO as text. This guide covers the reliable way to do that from the UI.

Steps

1. Open Reflow. Navigate to the Reflow console (search the app menu for Reflow and open it).

2. Open the Flow DAO. In the console, type:

   dao flow
   

   This runs the dao command against flowDAO and renders a table of every saved flow.

3. Find the flow with a where clause. The flow list can be long, so filter it with an AQL query in the DAO browser’s search bar instead of scrolling. Match on the flow’s name:

   name="PropertyBorder"
   

   Other useful filters:

   name~"Demo"          // contains "Demo"
   category="demos"     // all flows in the demos category
   

   The table narrows to the matching flow(s).

4. Open the export in a new tab. Select the flow’s row and choose Download. Two format options appear:

   • JSON — a plain JSON representation of the flow object. Good for inspection, diffing, or tooling that expects JSON.
   • J (journal) — the journal form, i.e. the p({ ... }) entry you see in a .jrl file. This is what a flows.jrl stores, so it is the one to use when updating the checked-in flow.

   Rather than saving a file, right-click the format you want (JSON or J) and choose “Open Link in New Tab.” The raw text renders directly in the browser.

5. Select all and copy. In that new tab, select the entire contents (Cmd+A on macOS / Ctrl+A on Windows/Linux) and copy it (Cmd+C / Ctrl+C). This is the full, authoritative text of the flow.

6. Replace the flow in its source file. Open the flow’s source .jrl (e.g. foam3/src/foam/demos/u2/working-with-u2/flows.jrl), locate the entry for this flow — find its "name":"..." — and replace that flow’s p({ ... }) block with the text you just copied. Save. On the next build the updated flow replays into flowDAO.

Notes

• Lift the whole flow, not just a block. Exporting through flowDAO captures the complete flow — metadata (name, label, version, category), access control, and the full serialized script of blocks. Copying an individual block’s text out of the editor loses this wrapper.
• Version bumps. Each save increments the flow’s version. If you re-lift after editing, expect the version (and block contents) to differ from the copy you exported earlier — this is how the app detects that a stored flow is newer than a checked-in one.
• Round-trip. A lifted J entry can be dropped straight into a flows.jrl under the appropriate directory; it will be replayed into flowDAO on the next build. See Journals for how .jrl files load.

Related

• Reflow — the console, flows, and block model.
• AutoQueryParser — the where-clause query syntax used in step 3.
• Journals — how exported J entries are loaded back.

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