Custom .NET

Note: We do recommend keeping the source code for any custom .NET connectors in a VCS system (such as Git). When upgrading Flow to a new major version, the process on this page needs to be reperformed with the wrapper from the new major Flow version.

Flow has support for using third party .net assemblies. All public static methods with primitive types as arguments can be executed from a machine step in any type of workflows.

Follow these steps to setup a custom connector:

1. Run NovaCura.Flow.Connector.Wrapper.exe from your command line console.

   • It is located in Flow Designer program folder.

   • First argument is output connector dll name, example: CustomConnector.dll

   • Second argument is input assembly path.

   • If input assembly has dependencies to other assemblies those can be entered as arguments. For example: NovaCura.Flow.Connector.Wrapper.exe CustomConnector.dll CustomAssembly.dll CustomUtil.dll

2. Copy output dll to the current studio version (%appdata%\{{version}}) and to bin/CustomConnectors* folder located in Server installation folder.

3. Add a connector element to CustomConnectors.xml located in bin/CustomConnectors folder in Server installation folder.

   <!-- Change 'species' to a unique technical name --> 
    <!-- Change 'displayName' to a suitable display name --> 
    <!-- Change 'assemblyname' to the name of the output dll exluding .dll, in the example below the file is named CustomConnector.dll --> 
   <connector 
    species="custom_connector_name"
    displayName="DotNet API Custom Connector" 
    assemblyname="CustomConnector"
    type="NovaCura.Flow.Connector.Wrapper.ConnectorWrapper" 
    uitype="NovaCura.Flow.ApiConnector.UI.ApiConnectorUI" 
    uiassemblyname="NovaCura.Flow.ApiConnector.UI" /> 

4. Start Flow Designer and verify that a new connector type with the previous specified display name exists in Connectors page under Environments when adding a new connector.

5. Add the new connector and enter a suitable name.

6. The new connector should now exist in all machine step configurations.