Quickstart

This guide walks you through creating a simple Pipes workflow that reacts to order events, transforms the data, and sends it to an external fulfillment API.

Channel Eventorder.created

TransformExtract fields

HTTP POSTSend to fulfillment

Prerequisites

An npayload account with an app and API credentials
A channel named orders (or any channel you want to react to)

Step 1: Create the workflow

import NPayload from '@npayload/node';

const npayload = new NPayload({
  token: process.env.NPAYLOAD_TOKEN,
});

const workflow = await npayload.pipes.create({
  name: 'order-fulfillment',
  description: 'Process new orders and send to fulfillment',
  trigger: {
    type: 'event',
    channel: 'orders',
    filter: { event: 'order.created' },
  },
});

Step 2: Add a transform node

Extract the fields your fulfillment service needs:

workflow.addNode({
  id: 'extract-fields',
  type: 'transform',
  expression: {
    orderId: '{{ payload.id }}',
    items: '{{ payload.lineItems }}',
    shippingAddress: '{{ payload.shipping }}',
    priority: '{{ payload.expedited ? "rush" : "standard" }}',
  },
});

Step 3: Add an HTTP action

Send the transformed data to your fulfillment service:

workflow.addNode({
  id: 'send-to-fulfillment',
  type: 'http',
  method: 'POST',
  url: 'https://api.fulfillment.com/orders',
  headers: {
    Authorization: 'Bearer {{ secrets.FULFILLMENT_API_KEY }}',
    'Content-Type': 'application/json',
  },
  body: '{{ nodes["extract-fields"].output }}',
  retries: 3,
});

Step 4: Activate the workflow

await npayload.pipes.activate(workflow.id);

Step 5: Test it

Publish a test message to the orders channel:

await npayload.messages.publish({
  channel: 'orders',
  payload: {
    event: 'order.created',
    id: 'ord_test_001',
    lineItems: [
      { sku: 'WIDGET-A', quantity: 2 },
      { sku: 'GADGET-B', quantity: 1 },
    ],
    shipping: {
      name: 'Jane Doe',
      address: '123 Main St',
      city: 'Portland',
      state: 'OR',
      zip: '97201',
    },
    expedited: false,
  },
});

Check the execution status:

const executions = await npayload.pipes.executions.list({
  workflow: workflow.id,
  limit: 1,
});

console.log(executions[0].status); // "completed"
console.log(executions[0].duration); // "142ms"

What you built

In 5 minutes, you created a workflow that:

Triggers on new order events in the orders channel
Transforms the payload to match your fulfillment API schema
Sends the data to an external service with automatic retries
Checkpoints state at each step for durable execution

Next steps

Building workflows for more complex workflow patterns
Using AI nodes to add AI intelligence to your workflows
Node types for all available node types

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