When using the Data Flow Template the only needed Data Flow dependency is the Spring Cloud Data Flow Rest Client:

<dependency>
  <groupId>org.springframework.cloud</groupId>
  <artifactId>spring-cloud-dataflow-rest-client</artifactId>
  <version>1.1.2.RELEASE</version>
</dependency>

With that dependency you will get the DataFlowTemplate class as well as all needed dependencies to make calls to a Spring Cloud Data Flow server.

When instantiating the DataFlowTemplate, you will also pass in a RestTemplate. Please be aware that the needed RestTemplate requires some additional configuration to be valid in the context of the DataFlowTemplate. When declaring a RestTemplate as a bean, the following configuration will suffice:

  @Bean
  public static RestTemplate restTemplate() {
    RestTemplate restTemplate = new RestTemplate();
    restTemplate.setErrorHandler(new VndErrorResponseErrorHandler(restTemplate.getMessageConverters()));
    for(HttpMessageConverter<?> converter : restTemplate.getMessageConverters()) {
      if (converter instanceof MappingJackson2HttpMessageConverter) {
        final MappingJackson2HttpMessageConverter jacksonConverter =
            (MappingJackson2HttpMessageConverter) converter;
        jacksonConverter.getObjectMapper()
            .registerModule(new Jackson2HalModule())
            .addMixIn(JobExecution.class, JobExecutionJacksonMixIn.class)
            .addMixIn(JobParameters.class, JobParametersJacksonMixIn.class)
            .addMixIn(JobParameter.class, JobParameterJacksonMixIn.class)
            .addMixIn(JobInstance.class, JobInstanceJacksonMixIn.class)
            .addMixIn(ExitStatus.class, ExitStatusJacksonMixIn.class)
            .addMixIn(StepExecution.class, StepExecutionJacksonMixIn.class)
            .addMixIn(ExecutionContext.class, ExecutionContextJacksonMixIn.class)
            .addMixIn(StepExecutionHistory.class, StepExecutionHistoryJacksonMixIn.class);
      }
    }
    return restTemplate;
  }

Now you can instantiate the DataFlowTemplate with:

DataFlowTemplate dataFlowTemplate = new DataFlowTemplate(
    new URI("http://localhost:9393/"), restTemplate);         

Depending on your requirements, you can now make calls to the server. For instance, if you like to get a list of currently available applications you can execute:

PagedResources<AppRegistrationResource> apps = dataFlowTemplate.appRegistryOperations().list();

System.out.println(String.format("Retrieved %s application(s)",
    apps.getContent().size()));

for (AppRegistrationResource app : apps.getContent()) {
  System.out.println(String.format("App Name: %s, App Type: %s, App URI: %s",
    app.getName(),
    app.getType(),
    app.getUri()));
}