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Quixa organizes visual API orchestration, contract testing, and data generation into a structured 3-tier hierarchical architecture:

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1. The Atomic Unit: Node

A Node is the fundamental atomic building block of any Quixa workflow. Every node performs a discrete action, enforces isolated assertions, and provides structured input and output contracts.

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Types of Nodes

  • HTTP Request Nodes: Dispatches REST or HTTP requests (GET, POST, PUT, DELETE, PATCH) with automated payload binding, headers, query parameters, and authentication.
  • Control Flow Nodes: Logic routing components including If-Condition, Switch Router, For Loop, Repeat Loop, and Stop Flow.
  • Synchronization Nodes: Wait / Delay nodes and Collect / Barrier Join nodes for orchestrating parallel asynchronous branches.
  • Code Execution Nodes: Polyglot sandboxed scripts (JavaScript, TypeScript, Python, cURL, AWS Lambda).
  • Integration Nodes: Webhook listeners, Event Triggers, and Subflows.
  • Annotation Nodes: Canvas Frames (Groups), Sticky Notes, and Free-Format Text Labels for team collaboration and visual documentation.

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Node Anatomy

Each node encapsulates:
  1. Configurable Inputs: URL templates, dynamic parameters, request body, and auth schemes.
  2. Variable Extracts: Rules for pulling values from response bodies or headers into runtime variables.
  3. Polling Rules: Automated endpoint polling conditions (continueWhen and stopWhen).
  4. Assertions & Retries: Automated validation rules against HTTP status codes, latency, headers, and JSON schema with custom retry policies.
  5. Execution Results: Status codes, latency benchmarks, formatted JSON inspector, and step logs.

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2. The Directed Graph: Flow

A Flow is an executable directed graph (DAG or looping pipeline) connecting multiple nodes into an automated end-to-end process.

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Key Capabilities of Flows

  • Dynamic Data Plumbing: Seamlessly transfers tokens, session IDs, and entity references between nodes via the Response Binding Engine ({{ResponseBinding.<alias>.body.<path>}}).
  • State & Scope Isolation: Each flow execution maintains an isolated runtime state, preventing data leaks across concurrent executions.
  • Error Handling & Branching: Configurable error strategies (Continue On Error, Halt Flow, Fallback Path).
  • Visual Diagnostics: During execution, active paths highlight in green, while branches skipped by conditional rules automatically dim (grayed-out visual diagnostics) for immediate root-cause visibility.
  • Modularity via Subflows: Any flow can be published and embedded into other flows as a reusable Subflow Node, promoting cross-team reuse.

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3. The Enterprise Container: Flow Suite

A Flow Suite is an enterprise-grade orchestration container that groups and runs multiple flows as a unified test regression, scheduled monitor, or data generation pipeline.

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Why Use Flow Suites?

  • Topological Dependency Execution: Define execution order between flows (e.g., execute Auth Setup before Order Processing).
  • Suite-Wide Shared Variables: Share environment parameters, base URLs, and global tokens across all child flows without hardcoding.
  • Unified Reporting & Quality Gates: Consolidated execution reports with pass/fail counts, total duration, and SLA compliance metrics.
  • CI/CD Automation: Execute entire suites in headless pipelines using @quixa/cli:
  • Scheduled Recurrence: Trigger suites on automated background schedules using Quixa’s built-in 3-Tier Hangfire Cron Engine.

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Summary Matrix