Variables
Last updated
Last updated
Flow variables come in three different categories: simple values, records and tables.
A "simple value" (known as a "primitive type" value in some programming languages) is the most common variable type. A simple value variable can contain text ("string"), a number, a date, or a truth (Boolean) value. Internally, Flow keeps track of exactly which one of these sub-types a value currently has; however, as a user of the Flow Designer you rarely have to care about the exact type of a variable, since Flow will go to great lengths to automatically convert the types into something that makes sense in your workflow.
See Assignment row 1-3 for different types of simple value assignment.
The following list describes the different types of literals available in FlowScript.
Example
Result
"abcd"
A simple value containing the string abcd
'abcd'
A simple value containing the string abcd
1
A simple value containing the integer value 1
1.5
A simple value containing the floating point value 1.5
true
A simple value containing the boolean true
false
A simple value containing the boolean false
Note that FlowScript supports both single- and double quoted strings, allowing you to construct literals like "it's 'good' to be here" or 'hello "world"'.
When fetching data from outside sources using connectors, Flow will sometimes encounter numeric values that are set to null in a third party system. Such values are converted into a special NaN ("Not a Number") values in Flow. The IsNaN function can be used to test for this.
A table is a structure of columns and rows. Tables can be defined by one or more records (see row 6 in Assignment step above). There are many more ways to produce a table, for exmaple by using a Table step or Machine step. TODO
A record (roughly equivalent to a "dictionary" or "object" in other programming languages) is a group of named values.
Records are constructed using the following syntax:
See Assignment row 4 where a new record with name recordA is assigned with a value for name and age. This record can later on be used just like recordB is used on row 5.
You can use the unary asterisk operator (*) to create a single-row table from a record:
FlowScript supports nil values for records where the record has a known type. This allows recursive type definitions. In most cases, nil values are not allowed. Please see the Programs section for more information.
