Introduction
The Flowable RPA Framework client can be used to run robotic process automation (RPA) bots built with the RPA Framework. Flowable provides a client which can be executed on a host independent of Flowable and connect to Flowable through the REST API.
The client takes a RPA Framework .robot file, a Robocorp Action or Task.
In addition, it is required to provide connection attributes to the Flowable installation and connect to it.
Installation
To install the RPA Framework client, the Python package manager pip can be used.
The following command will install the client library:
pip install flowable.rpaframework-client
In addition to this, depending on the format to execute at least one of the following libraries need to be installed:
| Module | Description | Command |
|---|---|---|
| rpaframework | RPA framework to execute .action files. | pip install rpaframework |
| robocorp-tasks | Robocorp tasks module to execute tasks without any result value returned. | pip install robocorp-tasks |
| robocorp-actions | Robocorp action module to execute robocorp functions and return the result to Flowable. | pip install robocorp-actions |
Please note that rpaframework is as of writing this documentation the package rpaframework is using pendulum in an old version which is not compatible with Python 3.12 and newer.
You may want to consider using python 3.10 or 3.11 in case you get an error during the installation of rpaframework.
See rpaframework GitHub issue #1155 for further details.
Parameters
The following parameters are available to be used:
| Parameter | Description | Default |
|---|---|---|
| -h, --help | Shows the help message and exit | |
| --mode {robot,action,task} | Type of rpaframework robot or robocorp action or task | robot |
| --flowable-host FLOWABLE_HOST | URL of Flowable Work | https://trial.flowable.com/work |
| --flowable-token FLOWABLE_TOKEN | Bearer Token, can be used for example with the Flowable Trial | |
| --flowable-username FLOWABLE_USERNAME | Username for Flowable Work when using Basic Authentication | |
| --flowable-password FLOWABLE_PASSWORD | Password for Flowable Work when using Basic Authentication |
Typically Flowable uses authentication, which means that either the token or the username/password need to be present. For the Flowable Trial the token must be generated and used. How this can be done is shown in the example.
When you provide custom host, the host name typically doesn't end with a trailing slash. This slash will be added automatically for the endpoints for which it is required.