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Flow Commands

The purpose of the flow commands is to run flow files, which are modular, platform-independent ways to run a series of Liquibase commands in one or more stages. Flows allow you to run commands in a particular sequence according to conditional statements you specify.

For information about flow files, see Liquibase Flow Files.

Flow Category

These commands are available in all Liquibase editions.

  • flow: lets you run a series of commands contained in one or more stages within a Liquibase flow file.
  • flow validate: lets you validate a series of commands contained in one or more stages within a Liquibaseflow file.

Each individual flow command page specifies the criteria for using the command successfully, including a list of required and optional command-specific arguments.

Flow Command Requirements

  • The flow and flow validate commands require the liquibase-commercial.jar file to be located in the $LIQUIBASE_HOME/internal/lib folder to work.
  • Using the flow commands requires Liquibase version 4.15.0 or later.

Tip: $LIQUIBASE_HOME is an environment variable that points to the location of the directory where Liquibase is installed on your machine. You can set environment variables using your operating system's shell. The location of $LIQUIBASE_HOME will depend on where Liquibase was installed on your machine.

Troubleshooting

  • Visit the Liquibase Installation Troubleshooting documentation page for troubleshooting steps.

  • If Liquibase returns an error when you run a flow command, use the Liquibase --help parameter to check the correct syntax of the command and the command-specific parameters you can use with it.

    For example, in the CLI: 

    liquibase <command> --help

Liquibase Resources

Liquibase Help

Visit the Liquibase Forum channel to ask questions, find answers from other Liquibase users, and learn about new Liquibase version releases.

Tutorials

  • Visit the Liquibase Flow Files page to learn how to configure and use flow files.
  • Visit the Flow Conditionals page to learn how to specify conditional expressions within flows.
  • Visit the Flow Variables page to learn how to specify dynamic variables within flows.
  • Visit the Shell Commands page to learn how to access your command line shell from a Liquibase flow file.
  • Visit the Advanced Flow File page to see examples of flow files with many features used simultaneously.