I would like to connect a MySQL DB to Flow, I dont have one, was thinking of using Amazon Web Services or Google but Im open to suggestions.
I found a step by step for connecting Zapier to AWS but I would really prefer to use Flow.
One of the things the Zapier setup covers is adding their IP address to the AWS security group… does anyone know what IP the Flow requests would come from?
Any help on choosing and hooking up a DB appreciated.
Our MySQL service currently allows you to create/update rows, the functionality is cut down, but we will be providing a more general Run a Query action soon.
However, our requests won’t come from a single IP, and we don’t have an exhaustive list.
Amazon RDS is a bit tricky to get firewalled properly - they also expect requests to come signed with a special cert too, I don’t believe you could get past that hurdle currently. I’ll pass this feedback on as we do want to provide a better MySQL service in Flow XO, and AWS compatibility is important.
In the meantime, there are other hosted MySQL options out there, maybe try https://www.cleardb.com (although I haven’t tried personally), it should work OK.
Let us know how you get on with this.
I have the same type of question. If they can’t/wont share the IP addresses/ranges, can I use a domain that the request will be coming from? I can use a host wildcard with my GoDaddy hosted mysql db.
Thanks,
A Smusz
As long as GoDaddy allow connections from outside their network, you should be able to use their MySQL DB.
You will need to use wildcard host %, but as long as you use an extremely strong password, and even better a random strong username along with a strong password, this will still be secure.
Hi John. Is it still the case that we have to use a wildcard host % on our databases in order to allow Flow XO to connect? This seems like a bad security practice - it would be most preferable to allow SSH tunneling into a server to connect to MySQL, but failing that, it would be better for Flox XO to provide a list of IP addresses that we can whitelist. Thanks for your consideration.
Hi Blake,
I understand your concerns here. Unfortunately at the moment we don’t support SSH, we also don’t have an exhaustive list of IP addresses that we use, so we wouldn’t be able to provide a list of IP’s to be whitelisted. 
I will pass your thoughts on to the development team, but I can’t guarantee if/when changes may occur as the development team are working really hard at the moment to release a new improved flow editor and improvements to the web messenger. 