topic Activiti REST start process instance is -not- asynch? in Alfresco Archive

Activiti REST start process instance is -not- asynch?

dmill — Mon, 15 Dec 2014 22:06:59 GMT

Hey guys.I'm using activiti-rest to handle our workflow needs. One of my issues is that when I start a process instance with "runtime/process-instances" this works without problem but it will only send a response back to the client once all the tasks that can be executed are done running. This is a

Re: Activiti REST start process instance is -not- asynch?

trademak — Tue, 16 Dec 2014 07:45:27 GMT

Hi,

That's normal with this process definition, because tasks run synchronously by default.
You can add an async attribute to a service task to make it asynchronous and then the REST service will send a response quickly.

Best regards,

Re: Activiti REST start process instance is -not- asynch?

dmill — Wed, 17 Dec 2014 22:46:51 GMT

Great thanks for the info!! Do you know if this works with shell tasks? As the following doesn't seem to work (I added an async tag to the second Service task):


<process id="node-pre-process" name="Generates node information">
    <startEvent id="theStart" />
    <sequenceFlow id="flow1" sourceRef="theStart" targetRef="consoleMeta"></sequenceFlow>
    <serviceTask id="consoleMeta" name="Retrieve Meta Data" activiti:type="shell" >
        <extensionElements>
            <activiti:field name="command">
                <activiti:expression>${yiiCommand}</activiti:expression>
            </activiti:field>
     <activiti:field name="arg1" stringValue="node/add-meta" />
     <activiti:field name="arg2">
                <activiti:expression>${nodeKey}</activiti:expression>
            </activiti:field>
        </extensionElements>
    </serviceTask>
    <sequenceFlow id="flow2" sourceRef="consoleMeta" targetRef="consoleBase"></sequenceFlow>
    <serviceTask id="consoleBase" name="Generate Base Image"  activiti:type="shell" activiti:async="true"  >
        <extensionElements>
            <activiti:field name="command">
                <activiti:expression>${yiiCommand}</activiti:expression>
            </activiti:field>
            <activiti:field name="arg1" stringValue="node/generate-base" />
            <activiti:field name="arg2">
                <activiti:expression>${nodeKey}</activiti:expression>
            </activiti:field>
        </extensionElements>
    </serviceTask>
    <endEvent id="theEnd"/>
    <sequenceFlow id="flow3" sourceRef="consoleBase" targetRef="theEnd"></sequenceFlow>
</process>

Re: Activiti REST start process instance is -not- asynch?

dmill — Wed, 17 Dec 2014 22:56:32 GMT

My bad it actually works as expected! thanks

Re: Activiti REST start process instance is -not- asynch?

dmill — Wed, 17 Dec 2014 23:18:43 GMT

I just realized that sync doesn't take expressions. This is a bit of an issue if you want to unit test your workflows. You can't programmatically set the async to false when running unit tests but keep it at true for production use.