Start and Stop Mule Flow at Runtime

2 min readApr 17, 2020

Note: While copy/paste the code snippet from blog please covert quotes and double quotes.

MuleSoft provides options to make a flow stop and start at design time. However there are few cases where we might need to decide to start and stop flow dynamically/on request.

Use Case # 1: Start Flow Only Once on project start up
Use Case # 2: Enable and Disable flows on demand or from configuration file

In the above mentioned use cases if we follow the standard approach we need to generate JAR again and deploy it. However functionality wise there is no code change.

In this blog I will explore the options which can be opted in above mentioned use cases without regenerating the JAR file.

Option # 1: Using Groovy Script with in Code
Option # 2: Using CURL or Postman
Option # 3: Using ARM REST Services from Mule Flow

Lets dig deeper to each of the option:

Option # 1: Using Groovy Script with in Code

You will need to perform the following steps:

Add the scripting module to your project if you haven’t previously added it.
Add a scripting component like the following:

This script can switch the status of the flow identified by flowName. I.e. if flow is stopped it will start and vice versa.

Option # 2: Using CURL or Postman

Mulesoft Anypoint Runtime Manager publishes an API to manage Anypoint Runtime Manager programmatically. One of the API can also be used to start and stop the specific flow.

ARM API URL: https://anypoint.mulesoft.com/hybrid/api/v1/applications/{applicationId}/flows/{flowId}

Method Name: PATCH

URI Param:

applicationId: Application ID of the Mule Application in deployed environment its not application name. To get the application id do GET operation on https://anypoint.mulesoft.com/hybrid/api/v1/applications
flowId: Flow Id i.e. Flow Name give in Anypoint Studio

Body: example {‘desiredStatus’: ‘STARTED’}

ACCESS_TOKEN: Access Token to access MuleSoft Anypoint Runtime Manager API

To change the flow status run below mentioned CURL command

Or use Postman