Getting 'current task' and determining its type

[jlilley]

As part of reporting/dashboarding functions in our software, I want to provide a "process instance state" report that can be accessed via REST services that we publish.  To that end, I get the "current task" for a process instance:
taskService.createTaskQuery().processInstanceBusinessKey(processInstance.getBusinessKey()).list().get(0);
Is this approach to getting the current task correct?  Let's assume for a moment lack of parallelism as our processes are fairly simple.  Can it be assumed that, while a process instance is active, there is always at least one active task that will be returned by this query?  If not, what other information should I be fetching about the process instance state that would provide a nice snapshot of what state it is in?

Also, while the Task object gives me good information, I can't see where to get the "type" of the task (e.g. UserTask, ScriptTask, ServiceTask, etc).  Is there such a getter?  If not, are there internal class names that I can compare against?

Thanks
john

[martin_grofcik]

Hi John,

Can it be assumed that, while a process instance is active, there is always at least one active task that will be returned by this query?

yes

Is there such a getter?

Type of the task is stored in the model/definition.

Regards
Martin

[jlilley]

Hmmm, OK.  So how would one find the model, find the task definition, and extract the task type?  I realize that I could load the XML directly from its resource and parse it myself.  Looking for a shortcut.  Do I need to go at it from the Deployment interface?
Thanks
john

[trademak]

taskService.createTaskQuery() only returns user tasks. You would need to use runtimeService.createExecutionQuery() to get all running executions of a process instance. Every execution has an activityId property and that can be used to retrieve the Bpmn element with all the type info etc. RepositoryService.getBpmnModel gives you the BpmnModel of a process definition id and then you can use bpmnModel.getFlowElement(activityId) to get the specific Bpmn element and with that all its information.

Best regards,