What are flow commands?

Last published July 28, 2025

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 Liquibase

    flow 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

  • 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

What are flow commands? - Liquibase