What is a Connector?

A high-level overview of the concept of connectors in FlowMate

At the core of any FlowMate flow are connectors. Each connector contains a bundle of functions that handles communication with a particular application. Usually we have one connector for each application, though particularly large ecosystems such as Microsoft, Google, or Hubspot may have several connectors, each focusing on specific APIs.

Connector Functions

Each connector contains a number of functions to interface with the API of the connected application. Generally one function corresponds to exactly one API endpoint. The connector also stores the expected input- and output-data schemas of these endpoints, in order to simplify data transformation between connectors and functions.

Virtual Endpoints

Occasionally, certain use-cases require additional logic or a combination of API requests that would be overly cumbersome to handle through regular flow functions. In these cases, FlowMate may implement "virtual endpoints", bespoke functions that bundle several API calls or internal logic into one function.

Connector Authentication

Connectors also contain the information necessary to authenticate with the respective application. This way, a user only needs to connect to the application once, and those credentials will then automatically be used for any flows involving this connector. Currently supported authentication types are:

• Oauth 2.0

• API Keys (Bearer token or otherwise)

• Basic Auth

• Session tokens

Functional Components

In addition to application-specific connectors, FlowMate also offers a suite of functional components. These can be used to enable advanced flow behaviors. Some currently available functional components are:

• Logic Gateway: Enables branching flows by executing specified steps depending on what data is received

• Code Component: Can execute small code snippets on received data. Useful for debugging or particularly advanced data transformation

• Webhook Component: Allows you to specify the format of incoming webhooks you intend to send, simplifying data transformation