I am trying to automate deployment of a NiFi flow with several versioned process groups using the NiFi APIs. The basic setup I have is this: I have a dozen or so process groups, each of which has been versioned within a NiFi registry My root process group contains each of those process groups, with various connections between their ports as well as a few variable definitions and controller service instances.
My goal is to deploy this flow, including the root process group that links the versioned PGs as well as the versioned PGs themselves. So far, I’ve managed to use the registry API to create a bucket and to add the versioned flows into the registry. Now I’m trying to use the NiFi APIs to instantiate the root PG and link together all the versioned PGs that I have just inserted into the registry. The approach I have been trying is to capture my root PG as a template, and then use the NiFi APIs to import and then instantiate that template. I have gotten this much working, but unfortunately that leaves the PGs disconnected from the versioned flows in the registry. I was hoping there was a way to transform the template to insert the appropriate bucket and flow IDs but I have been unable to figure out if this is possible. Alternatively, I suspect I could create an intermediate process group to contain all my “real” PGs, and then version that intermediate PG. I could then use the APIs to instantiate a new PG at the root level that is imported from the intermediate PG. I suspect that this could work, but it is less than ideal because I’m creating an artificial intermediate PG to contain all of my real contents, which will be a distraction for users who come into the NiFi data flow manager to monitor this process. Am I looking at this approach correctly? Are there other options I should be considering? Thanks in advance, -Tim
