topic Re: User id in act_hi_attachment is always null in Alfresco Archive

User id in act_hi_attachment is always null

sistemasmunicip — Fri, 13 Dec 2013 14:25:39 GMT

Hello, using Java api to add attachments to a Task, the field user_id_ in the act_hi_attachment is never set. As for the Attachment java class, it doesn't have an user_id attribute either.I was hoping to control the users that can read/delete an attachment usin the user id.I tried with Authorization

Re: User id in act_hi_attachment is always null

frederikherema1 — Mon, 16 Dec 2013 07:19:44 GMT

If you're adding attachments using the API, make sure the logic that calls the API is managing the "current user" the engine uses.
This is done by setting a (internally thread-local) value using org.activiti.engine.impl.identity.Authentication:



try {
  Authentication.setAuthenticatedUserId("kermit");

  // Your code here
} finally {
  Authentication.setAuthenticatedUserId(null);  
}

You can perhaps add it to a shared base-class of your application (or a servlet-filter) to have this done transparently.

Re: User id in act_hi_attachment is always null

sistemasmunicip — Mon, 16 Dec 2013 10:45:48 GMT

Frederik, thanks for the answer.
I had tried with Authentication.setAuthenticatedUserId but the result is the same. (in the first post I wrote the class wrong - Authorization.authenticatedUser) Here, the code for a test that attachs a file but without user id
<code>
                // ActProcessEngine is a custom class that returns default process engine if exists, or creates a new one
ProcessEngine processEngine = ActProcessEngine.getProcessEngine();
Authentication.setAuthenticatedUserId("my.user");

File f = new File("/home/Descargas/5577.pdf");

TaskService ts = processEngine.getTaskService();

try {
   ts.createAttachment("application/pdf", "42592", "42221", "pruebaUsuario.pdf", "prueba con authenticated user", new FileInputStream(f));
} catch (FileNotFoundException e) {
   e.printStackTrace();
}

Authentication.setAuthenticatedUserId(null);
processEngine.close();
</code>

thanks again. Greetings
Esteban

Re: User id in act_hi_attachment is always null

balsarori — Tue, 17 Dec 2013 00:41:04 GMT

AttachmentEntity doesn't have a userId property and USER_ID_ of ACT_HI_ATTACHMENT is not mapped in Attachment.xml to any property.

Re: User id in act_hi_attachment is always null

frederikherema1 — Tue, 17 Dec 2013 08:46:10 GMT

Good point balsarori. The user who creates the attachment is stored in a "comment":


public void createAttachmentComment(String taskId, String processInstanceId, String attachmentName, boolean create) {
    if (isHistoryEnabled()) {
      String userId = Authentication.getAuthenticatedUserId();
      CommentEntity comment = new CommentEntity();
      comment.setUserId(userId);
      comment.setType(CommentEntity.TYPE_EVENT);
      comment.setTime(ClockUtil.getCurrentTime());
      comment.setTaskId(taskId);
      comment.setProcessInstanceId(processInstanceId);
      if(create) {
        comment.setAction(Event.ACTION_ADD_ATTACHMENT);
      } else {
        comment.setAction(Event.ACTION_DELETE_ATTACHMENT);
      }
      comment.setMessage(attachmentName);
      getSession(CommentEntityManager.class).insert(comment);
    }
  }

Re: User id in act_hi_attachment is always null

sistemasmunicip — Tue, 17 Dec 2013 10:21:09 GMT

I know the AttachmentEntity doesn't have a user_id_ property, but I was thinking I could query directly to the table in the worst case. I will try the comment and let you know.
Thanks for your answers.
Esteban

Re: User id in act_hi_attachment is always null

sistemasmunicip — Tue, 17 Dec 2013 15:11:31 GMT

Hello. here's an update:
I got it working by querying the TaskService via getProcessInstanceComments(processInstanceId) - once the task is completed the attachment is related to the process instance - and then matching with the taskId (will see what to do when a task has more than one attachment)

Maybe I'm approaching it the wrong way, but here's the scenario:
I have a user task that has a listener for the onComplete event. That listener generates a pdf and attachs it to the task. This task is a part of an administrative process and I want only the user that generated the attachment to be able to delete it, or someone with admin permission only (it is not saved as a file but as a byte stream on the act_ge_bytearray table).
So, when I saw the user_id_ field on the attachment table I thought - problem solved.

As balsarori pointed out, AttachmentEntity doesn't have a user_id_ property, but there's still the field on the table. The comment table obviously has no attachment_id field - that would be wrong, but saves "AddAttachment" as action_ , and the file name as message_ . I'm curious as to why I can't retrieve any of the 2 fields through the Comment class (no getAction() or getMessage() methods ) - I can use getFullMessage() but it's null.

In my opinion, it would be much easier to save the user_id to the act_hi_attachment table, but then again, is my approach wrong?

Thanks
Esteban

Re: User id in act_hi_attachment is always null

frederikherema1 — Wed, 18 Dec 2013 08:31:05 GMT

Esteban,

Comments and Attachments are a bit of "entities on the side", not 100% critical to the BPMN behaviour (as opposed to tasks, identity-links, executions, …). So the comments and attachments are added to facilitate working around tasks.

However, when I see your requirements, I think a better solution would be to use a process-variable for this and make your services smart enough to allow users to modify/delete that specific variable.

Re: User id in act_hi_attachment is always null

sistemasmunicip — Wed, 18 Dec 2013 11:26:56 GMT

Frederik:
I understand your point, will try to work out the solution.
Any chance, in future versions, of user_id_ being inserted in act_hi_attachment?
Thanks
Esteban

Re: User id in act_hi_attachment is always null

balsarori — Wed, 18 Dec 2013 20:37:03 GMT

@Frederik

I also had a similar requirement. I solved it by adding a userId property to AttachmentEntity (getUserId method to Attachment interface) and mapped it to Attachment.xml.

If you are interested I can create a pull request for this.

Re: User id in act_hi_attachment is always null

jbarrez — Thu, 19 Dec 2013 09:16:44 GMT

Makes sense to me. A pull request would be good. i'll make sure we add the necessary db upgrades.

Re: User id in act_hi_attachment is always null

balsarori — Thu, 19 Dec 2013 22:04:49 GMT

OK

Here is the pull request
https://github.com/Activiti/Activiti/pull/185

Re: User id in act_hi_attachment is always null

sistemasmunicip — Fri, 20 Dec 2013 14:26:17 GMT

Good! Thanks for your time.
An FYI, a similar situation occurs with act_hi_detail and task_id_ field, at least in my implementation (5.14) the field is always null.
Trying to get the variable updates for specific task ids
Greetings

Re: User id in act_hi_attachment is always null

quaff — Wed, 26 Mar 2014 00:08:11 GMT

Hi,I create a PR to fix Attachment.getUserId() always return null

https://github.com/Activiti/Activiti/pull/236

Re: User id in act_hi_attachment is always null

jbarrez — Tue, 01 Apr 2014 17:43:04 GMT

Pull request merged, thanks!