Hello, World!

Every workflow begins with a YAML-based "Workflow Definition". In this article you'll learn the first basics of the workflow definition.

Demo

id: helloworld
states:
- id: hello
  type: noop
  transform: 'jq({ msg: "Hello, world!" })'

Run this workflow. Leave the Workflow Input empty for now. You should see something like the following:

Output

{
  "msg": "Hello, world!"
}

Workflow Definition

Now that we've seen it in action, let's go through each of the lines in the Workflow Definition and understand what they mean.

Workflow ID

id: helloworld

Every workflow definition needs to specify a workflow identifier at the top of the document. The identifier is used by UIs and other workflows as a reference to this workflow. This identifier must be unique within the namespace (more on namespaces later).

States

states:

A workflow just wouldn't be a workflow without states to actually do something. Every workflow must have at least one state.

State ID

- id: hello

Like the workflow itself, every state has to have its own identifier. The state identifier is used in logging and to define transitions, which will come up in a later example when we define more than one state. A state identifier must be unique within the workflow definition.

State Type

  type: noop

There are many types of state that do all sorts of different things. We'll go over the possible states later, but for this example we're using the noop state. The noop state (short for "no-operation") does nothing other than log Instance Data.

Transform Command

  transform: 'jq({ msg: "Hello, world!" })'

Any state may optionally define a "transform", and it's used here to generate the classic "Hello, World!" message. Transform applies a jq command to the instance data and replaces the instance data with the results. We'll go into more detail about transforms later.