topic Programmatic process definition and deployment (without xml) in Alfresco Archive

Programmatic process definition and deployment (without xml)

hieu_ho — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 16:41:09 GMT

Hi everyoneI'm new to Activiti and wanted to see if it will work for a project we're migrating.I couldn't find a good example of creating a processDefinition and deploying it programatically. I took point from ProcessDefinitionsTest, and a few others, but they seem to be deploying a process by read

Re: Programmatic process definition and deployment (without xml)

hieu_ho — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 16:26:05 GMT

So, not sure if this is correct usage, but as it turns out, if I do the folllowing, I'm able to start my process for specific objects.


PvmProcessInstance processInstance = processDefinition.createProcessInstance();
processInstance.setVariable("userId", "myTest");
processInstance.start();

To test it, I went ahead and looked up the activities that I ended up with. I got the expected activity.


List activeIds = processInstance.findActiveActivityIds();
Assert.assertNotNull(activeIds);

PvmActivity activity = processInstance.getActivity();

Re: Programmatic process definition and deployment (without xml)

ronald_van_kuij — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 17:47:35 GMT

If it works, it is technically correct usage, but the 'api's us use are not public, so they might change without any notice and things stop working. In that regard it is bad practice.

Re: Programmatic process definition and deployment (without xml)

hieu_ho — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 17:19:02 GMT

Thanks Ronald

can you clarify what you mean by not public? I took these examples from PvmTest and ProcessDefinitionTest in the examples project. Do you mean these methods are not part of services api? Are there "public" ones I should be using?

Thanks

Hieu

Re: Programmatic process definition and deployment (without xml)

ronald_van_kuij — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 21:40:34 GMT

They are in the impl package… And afaik, there are no public classes/interfaces that you can use to achieve what you want. So either accept that things can change between releases or look at other ways to achieve what you want.

Re: Programmatic process definition and deployment (without xml)

artur_karczmarc — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 10:21:32 GMT

I try to create a process definition without using the bpmn20.xml resource file, since I need to generate process definitions in my application dynamically. After creating process definition with ProcessDefinitionBuilder object and starting a process instance, I try to query for a task from the created process instance, but it fails. Could you point me out what I'm doing wrong, or show me any example of such dynamic process definition generation and execution as mentioned above?

Here is the source code I'm writing, the assertion at the bottom of the code fails, since no tasks are being found:


@Test
public void createProcessDefinition() {
 ProcessDefinitionBuilder processDefinitionBuilder = new ProcessDefinitionBuilder();
 
 //a map with tasks descriptions
 List<Map<String, String>> activities = new ArrayList<Map<String, String>>();
 Map<String, String> activity;
 
 activity = new HashMap<String, String>();
 activity.put("id", "UT1");
 activity.put("name", "User task 1");
 activities.add(activity);
 
 activity = new HashMap<String, String>();
 activity.put("id", "UT2");
 activity.put("name", "User task 2");
 activities.add(activity);
 
 activity = new HashMap<String, String>();
 activity.put("id", "UT3");
 activity.put("name", "User task 3");
 activities.add(activity);
 
 
 // creating process definition
 int len = activities.size();
 for (int i = 0; i < len; i++) {
  processDefinitionBuilder.createActivity(activities.get(i).get("id"));
  if (i == 0) {
   processDefinitionBuilder.initial();
  }
  
  processDefinitionBuilder.behavior(new ActivitiWaitState());
  
  if (i + 1 < len) {
   processDefinitionBuilder.transition(activities.get(i+1).get("id"));
  }
 }
 PvmProcessDefinition processDefinition = processDefinitionBuilder.buildProcessDefinition();
 
 PvmProcessInstance processInstance = processDefinition.createProcessInstance();
 processInstance.start();
 
 TaskQuery taskQuery = activitiTaskService.createTaskQuery();
 List<Task> tasks = taskQuery.list();
 Assert.assertTrue(tasks.size() > 0);
}

Re: Programmatic process definition and deployment (without xml)

ronald_van_kuij — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 19:45:24 GMT

Processes need to be 'deployed' to be really useful. Why not create xml via java and deploy that?

Re: Programmatic process definition and deployment (without xml)

artur_karczmarc — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 20:44:24 GMT

Thank you for your answer. I just wondered if it is posible to create, deploy and run a process without creating xml file, since I have a group of objects in my app, which then I will have to transform to XML only to transform it back to some objects.

I tried creating the xml file in java and then deploying it from String in memory, everything works fine

Re: Programmatic process definition and deployment (without xml)

ronald_van_kuij — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 06:03:58 GMT

I doubt you have all activiti objects, so what is the difference?

Re: Programmatic process definition and deployment (without xml)

artur_karczmarc — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 06:12:29 GMT

Okay, thanks, I'll do it the xml-way

Re: Programmatic process definition and deployment (without xml)

ronald_van_kuij — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 16:05:52 GMT

That is at least 'guaranteed' to be stable 🙂

Re: Programmatic process definition and deployment (without xml)

vincentbonnet — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 16:45:08 GMT

Is it a joke… /:/ to generate xml from my object/PvmProcessDefinition then re-import in the ProcessEngine via stream resource reading ?
PvmProcessDefinition should not be the centric language/model/template of work of the process engine ?

Re: Programmatic process definition and deployment (without xml)

heymjo — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 06:33:30 GMT

I had a need for this and since 5.9 (thanks to http://jira.codehaus.org/browse/ACT-831) you can generate and execute a subprocess dynamically.

- your base (non dynamic) processdefinition should have a callActivity with a variable as calledElement


<callActivity id="callCheckCreditProcess" name="Check credit" calledElement="${dynamicProcess}" />

- just before this callactivity you put a service task to generate and deploy the processdefinition


  String processXml = generateMyProcessDefinitionXml();
  String processId = …. ; // the process id referenced in processXml
  DeploymentBuilder deploymentBuilder = processEngine.getRepositoryService().createDeployment().name(..);
  // make sure that the name ends with .bpmn20.xml otherwise it won't deploy
  deploymentBuilder.addString("dynamicprocess.bpmn20.xml",processXml);      
  deploymentBuilder.deploy();
  execution.setVariable("dynamicProcess", processId);

- then when the callActivity kicks in it will lookup the newly deployed process and execute it