topic Re: extendind the palette of activiti designer in Alfresco Archive

extendind the palette of activiti designer

mhammad_makni — Fri, 29 Mar 2013 11:47:09 GMT

hi;I'm trying to extend te palette of activiti designer with a special tipe of bundary event and specific connector.I seceeded in the implementation of the exepple of money node witch is written in user guide.I kept reading user guide and I reached to uderstand this:-the annotation @Runtime allow t

Re: extendind the palette of activiti designer

tiesebarrell — Sat, 30 Mar 2013 13:25:16 GMT

You can't extend the palette to create new types of boundary events. This is only supported for Service Tasks. If you use an @Runtime annotation on a service task extension, you don't *have* to implement JavaDelegate anymore (since last release). It can also be a Spring Bean. But in most cases, you will probably implement JavaDelegate. However, the implementation is not to be found in that package, because those are the default implementations. In most cases, you will want to write your own implementation of JavaDelegate en link to that using @Runtime.

Re: extendind the palette of activiti designer

mhammad_makni — Sat, 30 Mar 2013 19:24:38 GMT

does this mean that I can't use activiti designer to acheve my purpose or I can create new types of boundary events if I implelent JavaDelegate to create my own; because I have to follow the instruction of my proffessor who supervise me, and if I can't I'll be obliged to find a new BPMN editor, wich I don't want to do it. :cry:
please could you provide me a solution to get my aim. ops:
thank you for your response;

Re: extendind the palette of activiti designer

tiesebarrell — Sun, 31 Mar 2013 08:39:07 GMT

You're mixing two things here.

1) To implement CustomServiceTasks in Designer, which is what adds new kinds of elements to the palette, you don't implement JavaDelegate. You write a regular java class and annotate it as specified in the user guide.

2) Any ServiceTask can be bound to a runtime implementation, which is the code that is executed when a process instance is being executed and the service task is reached. Since a CustomServiceTask is effectively a regular ServiceTask at runtime, this is available for CustomServiceTasks as well. This is what is specified using the @Runtime annotation on the CustomServiceTask's class. One of the options for that runtime implementation is to implement JavaDelegate, but keep in mind this is the runtime implementation and has very little to do with defining a CustomServiceTask itself.

Regarding 1), this is only available for ServiceTasks (hence the name "CustomServiceTasks"), so if you need to add boundary events, you cannot use this. If you need to add customized boundary events, you will need to add them to the core of Designer in the same way any other boundary events have been created already. For examples of that, take a look at the implementations that are already there.

I hope this helps. In short, yes, you can do this, but not using the standard extension mechanism provided by CustomServiceTasks. You will have to expand the functionality of the core Designer to achieve it.

Re: extendind the palette of activiti designer

mhammad_makni — Mon, 01 Apr 2013 10:55:53 GMT

thanks a lot for you generosity;
this is rearlly help, but does this mean that I can't any more use the maven "mecanism" and I have to download the source code to expand the functionality of the core Designer.
thanks exceedingly.

Re: extendind the palette of activiti designer

tiesebarrell — Mon, 01 Apr 2013 10:57:38 GMT

yes, you will have to set up a complete development environment in Eclipse to extend the core functionality

Re: extendind the palette of activiti designer

mhammad_makni — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 21:22:41 GMT

I appreciate your precious advice , and I'm so grateful for you;
could you please guide me to previous works that manipulate the core functionality of activiti designer as well as mine.
thanks a lot.

Re: extendind the palette of activiti designer

tiesebarrell — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 18:32:24 GMT

The documentation for extending Designer that we have is all in the userguide here: http://activiti.org/userguide/index.html#eclipseDesignerExtending

With regards to extending Designer's core, there is no information. This is Eclipse plugin development work and we use Graphiti (http://www.eclipse.org/graphiti/) as a framework for the graphical editing.

There are a couple of places to look at in Designer's code base:
The package org.activiti.designer.features in the gui bundle contains Create and Add features for various kinds of palette items as examples.
The class org.activiti.designer.diagram.ActivitiBPMNFeatureProvider adds the items to the palette, so you'll need to add your new shape there.
In the package org.activiti.designer.property of the gui bundle are examples of property panes so user's can configure the properties of your shape.

Hope that helps to get you started. Have fun!

Re: extendind the palette of activiti designer

mhammad_makni — Sat, 13 Apr 2013 11:17:43 GMT

hi;
I followed your instructions and I started to navigate into the code, mainly, the packages that you have mentionned beside the documentation of graphiti; then I discovred that I passed the most important thing :shock: witch is how to run the source code of designer, so I proceeded this tutorial http://docs.codehaus.org/display/ACT/Activiti+Designer+Developer+Guide and I thought that it seems GMF, so I went to file new loocking for a project or diagram named activiti or bpmn in the "environment for working with Activiti Designer" and I didn't find any thing could help me. :roll:
could you please tell me what should I do. ops:
thanks you very much.

Re: extendind the palette of activiti designer

tiesebarrell — Sat, 13 Apr 2013 11:21:51 GMT

The description there is actually still pretty much spot on. You should install the Graphiti SDK, run mvn eclipse:eclipse on all the Designer projects and then run Eclipse from the org.activiti.designer.eclipse bundle using right-click > run as > Eclipse Application. Any changes you've made to the original Designer bundles will then be picked up.

Re: extendind the palette of activiti designer

mhammad_makni — Sat, 13 Apr 2013 13:16:09 GMT

should I "Checkout all of the folders in the source control location as top level Eclipse projects" as it has been said because the project contain 3 sub folder(branches, tag, trunk).
thanks a lot for answering.

Re: extendind the palette of activiti designer

tiesebarrell — Sat, 13 Apr 2013 15:09:19 GMT

Where are you looking? That sounds like the SVN repository, which we no longer use. In the Github project those folders aren't there.

Re: extendind the palette of activiti designer

mhammad_makni — Sat, 13 Apr 2013 21:19:37 GMT

you're right;
so I downloaded a zip file from github and I extact it into work space, because even when I download the code trough git eclipse plugin, I'll be faced by the same problem which is "all the folders in the source control location should be as top level Eclipse projects".
thank you very much.

Re: extendind the palette of activiti designer

tiesebarrell — Sun, 14 Apr 2013 07:24:22 GMT

It's easier to import the git projects directly into Eclipse, but still. Just do an import of each folder in Eclipse as a new project after extracting the zip.

Re: extendind the palette of activiti designer

mhammad_makni — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 13:48:58 GMT

hi;
when I importe the git projects directly into Eclipse, I'm not allowed to get the projects like they are in github, because I should define a root for them and it could be whether general project or an exsting project, so, I prefert to follow the zip file way and I did every thing you told and I could lately run it and I got an activiti winzard but I didn't get to instanciate it :? because of the following error
"The selected wizard could not be started.
Plug-in org.activiti.designer.eclipse was unable to load class org.activiti.designer.eclipse.ui.wizard.project.CreateDefaultActivitiProjectWizard.
org.activiti.designer.eclipse.ui.wizard.project.CreateDefaultActivitiProjectWizard"
I hope that I'm not bothering you by my questions ops:
thanks a lot.

Re: extendind the palette of activiti designer

tiesebarrell — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 18:59:59 GMT

Hi,

your projects are not imported correctly, or you wouldn't have those kinds of errors.

Actually, you can just clone the root level project from github, then add the local clone to eclipse using the git repo perspective. Then import the root as a general Eclipse project. Finally, just right click and perform import > existing Maven projects and that should work just fine.

Re: extendind the palette of activiti designer

mhammad_makni — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 10:31:22 GMT

hi;
I've done every thing you told me, but, unfortunately those errors are still persisting.
I'm so anxious now because this is taking much of time, so, please is there another solution

Re: extendind the palette of activiti designer

mhammad_makni — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 04:11:25 GMT

hi;
: ^^ *yahoo* :dance:
*i-m_so_happy* *HAPPY* :happy: :HAPPY: :Happy: ^^
thank you, I don't know how but it works now

Re: extendind the palette of activiti designer

mhammad_makni — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 13:38:59 GMT

hi;
as I annouunced in my frist comment , I want to add to the palette a specific type of boundary events and connectors.
first of all, how could I create a group in the palette as like as gateway for instance, and how do I link my shapes to it.
I succeeded to add a shape whitch I called "shape" by creating AddShapeFeature( extends AbstractAddBoundaryFeature) and CreateShapeFeature ( extends AbstractCreateBoundaryFeature). ps: I copied the classes AddBoundaryErrorFeature and
CreateBoundaryErrorFeature.
and I modified ActivitiBPMNFeatureProvider: I added IcreateFeature new CreateShapeFeature(this);
despite, I could'nt change the name of the shape neither it view in the diagram.
so am I in the right way, and what should I do to correct these mistake

Re: extendind the palette of activiti designer

mhammad_makni — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 13:39:01 GMT