topic extending the palette of activiti designer's palette in Alfresco Archive

extending the palette of activiti designer's palette

mhammad_makni — Sat, 27 Apr 2013 10:55:13 GMT

hi;the graphiti documentation consist to :domain model which determine an Eclass (metamodel)picogram model which define the graphic shape link model which link domain model element to picogram model element.so please, how do I implement my shape and how do I associate each element of my shape to eac

Re: extending the palette of activiti designer's palette

mhammad_makni — Wed, 01 May 2013 12:41:42 GMT

hi ;
can I add a shape to the palette whithout defining an Eclass
ps: the shape that I want to add is a specific type of bundary event
thanks a lot.

Re: extending the palette of activiti designer's palette

tiesebarrell — Thu, 02 May 2013 10:54:24 GMT

Sure, you can do that by extending the model project. We don't have a Eclass model in Designer ourselves, so this is similar to how we do it. You need to create a CreateFeature and AddFeature, similar to the ones we already have.

Re: extending the palette of activiti designer's palette

mhammad_makni — Thu, 02 May 2013 11:28:30 GMT

hi;
I added CreateShapeFeature and AddShapeFeature in order to create a shape called "shape".
so, I copied CreateBoundaryErrorFeature AddBoundaryErrorFeature because I want to add a specific type of boundary event, so I've got a new shape but I couldn't change the graphical image in the diagram and the it name contrariwise of the description.
beside I want to create a new palette component and fill it with my shapes.
so what should I do.
thanks for your generosity.

Re: extending the palette of activiti designer's palette

tiesebarrell — Thu, 02 May 2013 20:07:01 GMT

The shapes need to be added to the palette in the ActivitiToolBehaviorProvider class. Also, look at the ActivitiBPMNFeatureProvider for linking the two. The graphical representation in the diagram is determined in the Create feature. If you want to customize it, you should do it there. The palette graphical stuff is determined in the DefaultIconProvider, if I'm not mistaken.

Re: extending the palette of activiti designer's palette

mhammad_makni — Mon, 13 May 2013 14:16:14 GMT

hi;
please could you tell me how do I link the properties which I want to add to my shape to the element that you told me to add it earlier.
moreover, I wonder why there is two classes (PropertySection and PropertyFilter) for each shape
thanks alot.

Re: extending the palette of activiti designer's palette

tiesebarrell — Wed, 15 May 2013 17:09:07 GMT

Well, the linking is actually done by the filter. Eclipse will ask each filter whether the section should be shown for the provided element. There you need to check for your new type. If that matches, then your section will be shown.

Re: extending the palette of activiti designer's palette

mhammad_makni — Thu, 30 May 2013 10:50:25 GMT

hi,
I succeed to add a shape in the palette with its properties, but the properties added to my shape are not shown in the XML file.
so please could you tell me how I add the propery tag to the XML file (diagram)
thanks alot.

Re: extending the palette of activiti designer's palette

tiesebarrell — Thu, 30 May 2013 18:29:53 GMT

There are several ways to do this. The easiest way with the current release is to look in the org.activiti.designer.eclipse.editor.ActivitiDiagramEditor.doSaveToBpmn(Bpmn2MemoryModel, String) method. There you can see that a BpmnXMLConverter is created, that is used to transform the Bpmn2MemoryModel to XML. If you change the logic in there, you can output whatever you want once the model gets marshalled to XML.

Another option is to create your own ExportMarshaller. This is currently a disabled feature, but you can easily re-enable it by invoking your marshaller in org.activiti.designer.eclipse.editor.ActivitiDiagramEditor too. Or, you can wait for the next release, in which I hope to have the ExportMarshaller functionality back in there to use without changes.

Writing a custom marshaller can be quite a bit of work, though, so I'd take a look at changing or subclassing the default behavior from the first option I mentioned. That way you get all the default stuff, plus your extra XML.

Re: extending the palette of activiti designer's palette

mhammad_makni — Mon, 03 Jun 2013 23:13:03 GMT

hi;
I'm trying to extend the Bpmn notation, so I used activiti designer and I extended the palette by a sepcial type of a boundary event.
as you see in the comments that I posted earlier, I succeded to add a shape to the palette which mr tiese barrell helped me to get it.
but, unfortunatly I can't show its properties in the XML file, so mr tiese proposed to change the logic of the class BpmnXMLConverter.
could you tell me how to add the tag of my shape .

secondly, I wonder if I can extend the activiti designer project using eclipse plugin because I'm using the source code which is not a good way to publish my work.
thank you very much.

Re: extending the palette of activiti designer's palette

tiesebarrell — Sun, 09 Jun 2013 15:45:29 GMT

mhammad,

I don't understand the question. You ask how to produce the output for your element, but I don't know what output you require because it's your own custom output. If you look in BpmnXMLConverter, you either need to register your own converter using something similar to this line:

addConverter(BoundaryEventXMLConverter.getXMLType(), BoundaryEventXMLConverter.getBpmnElementType(), BoundaryEventXMLConverter.class);

Or you could subclass or adapt the BoundaryEventXMLConverter class. Which is best really depends on what you want to output. In general though, at some point, you need to get hold of the XMLStreamWriter which is used in those Converter classes and produce XML nodes and/or attributes if a model object of your specific type is encountered. Also, you need to implement the reverse conversion, XML -> BPMN model to make sure your element is read back when opening the diagram.

I'm afraid you will have to provide hooks into our code at some point, but the rest of your implementation could be a separate code base you add to the existing code. We don't provide extension points for this kind of functionality, especially because this is shared code with the engine and other modules, which are not Eclipse based.

Re: extending the palette of activiti designer's palette

mhammad_makni — Sun, 09 Jun 2013 16:27:07 GMT

hi,
thanks alot for responding.
as you said earlier, there is a doubt to provide hooks into the code and indeed I was obliged to do it several time from scrash.
so is there any chance to build an eclipse plugin.

I'm so grateful for you tips and I hope that it work
and thank you very much.