Install Flow and sign in the first time

Run it with Node.js

Flow needs Node.js and nothing else: no database, no external service.

git clone https://github.com/totaljs/flow.git
cd flow
npm install
npm run start

npm run start runs node index.js 8000. The port is optional on the command line and the default is 8000, so you open http://localhost:8000. Add --release to run in release mode.

Run it with Docker

docker pull totalplatform/flow
docker run -p 8000:8000 totalplatform/flow

The docker-compose.yaml of the repository maps port 8000 and keeps two volumes: the folder databases (settings and the user) and the folder flowstream (your streams). Keep those two volumes and you can replace the container whenever you update.

The first sign-in

At the first start Flow creates the only user of the application with a random login and a random password. Until the first successful sign-in, the sign-in page shows them in a box (Default account) with a button Fill in the form: click it and sign in. From that moment Flow deletes the plain copy of the password from its preferences and the box no longer appears, so open the password form of the application right away and set a login and a password of your own. Do the first sign-in as soon as you start a new installation, before anyone else can reach the address.

Some details of the sign-in, read from the source:

• The password is stored as a SHA-256 hash with the cookie_secret of the installation as the salt, and the session is a cookie of one month encrypted with the same secret. Flow generates the cookie name and the secret the first time and keeps them in databases/config.json.
• After repeated failed attempts an address is blocked (the block is cleared every 15 minutes).
• When the settings hold the tokens of an OpenPlatform (op_reqtoken, op_restoken), the sign-in page is replaced by the sign-in of that OpenPlatform and the permissions Create Flows and Remove Flows control who may create and remove streams.

Where the data lives

Folder	What it holds
databases/	config.json (cookie name and secret) and memorize_preferences.json (name, tokens, the user, the env, the URLs of the components)
flowstream/	database.json with every FlowStream: its design, components, variables and notes
private/	files that the streams write and that you can list with the token of Flow
public/cdn/	cache of the user-interface components that Flow downloads the first time they are needed

To move Flow to another machine, copy databases/ and flowstream/.

Update

Download the new version of the repository (the file version tells you which one you run: 11.1 in the revision documented here) or pull the new Docker image and start it with the same volumes.