REST api sample request to create task

[rohitagrawal]

as it's not available in documentation

[frederikherema1]

Thanks for reporting this. You can just do a POST to the runtime/tasks, with the body simmilar to the one used in the PUT runtime/tasks/1234 request.

I'll add the documentation for that to the current master.

[rohitagrawal]

http://localhost:8080/activiti-rest/service/runtime/tasks

getting error
{"errorMessage":"Method Not Allowed","statusCode":405}

please comment with sample request

[frederikherema1]

Sorry, POST that is

[skidvd]

POST http://localhost:8080/activiti-rest/service/runtime/tasks/5

When I test with the above and providing data similar to the PUT update, I get a 403.  What else is required to create a task?

[jbarrez]

You can check for yourself: https://github.com/Activiti/Activiti/blob/master/modules/activiti-rest/src/main/java/org/activiti/re...

[skidvd]

Thank you for the link to the source code.  From reviewing the code in that area, I am still puzzled and wondering if it is even possible to create a task with the REST services as indicated in the earlier posts of this thread?

The 403 response code I was receiving was caused by spring's CSRF protection which is enabled by default.  Got around that.

Moving forward, in an attempt to create a new task, I have attempted calls similar to both of the following (as described above in this thread):

POST http://localhost:8080/activiti-rest/service/runtime/tasks/5
PUT http://localhost:8080/activiti-rest/service/runtime/tasks/5

Both of these calls have a payload similar to:

{
"assignee" : "kermit",
"delegationState" : "pending",
"description" : "new task description",
"dueDate" : "2013-04-17T13:06:02.438+02:00",
"name" : "new task name",
"owner" : "kermit",
"parentTaskId" : null,
"priority" : 20
}

The POST call is expecting an action in the payload, so this results in a 400 Bad Request response.  From looking at the org.activiti.rest.service.api.runtime.task.TaskResource source, this method only handles ACTION_COMPLETE, ACTION_CLAIM, ACTION_DELEGATE and ACTION_RESOLVE.  Therefore, I conclude that the POST variant is not correct for creating a new task.

The PUT variant holds a bit more promise.  Especially as the updateTasks() method mapped to this URI does call saveTask() which ultimately appears to handle creation of a new task in the invoked org.activiti.engine.impl.cmd.SaveTaskCmd.  Unfortunately, it does not get that far as it first calls org.activiti.rest.service.api.runtime.task.TaskBaseResource.getTaskFromRequest().  Line 455 of this method throws a new ActivitiObjectNotFoundException (resulting in a 404 Not Found response) if the task does not exist.

I cannot locate any other task related services that appear to handle task creation in either the documentation or the source.  I therefore believe that this is not supported (at least in the 5.17 version that I am using). 

Am I missing something simple?  If not, is this by design or a bug?

Incidentally, if I try the same operation via the Java API, I am able to create the task.  I can then subsequently retrieve it via the GET  http://localhost:8080/activiti-rest/service/runtime/tasks service.  This tells me that I am successfully authenticating and communicating with the REST services in general.  Just no luck with creating or updating a task via REST services.

I'd greatly appreciate any assistance you can provide please.

[skidvd]

I locally modified org.activiti.rest.service.api.runtime.task.TaskResouce at line 54 of the updateTask method.  I replaced:

Task task = getTaskFromRequest(taskId);

with

Task task = null;
    try {
     task = getTaskFromRequest(taskId);
    } catch (org.activiti.engine.ActivitiObjectNotFoundException ignore) {
     // We ignore this exception to enable creation of new tasks
     task = new org.activiti.engine.impl.persistence.entity.TaskEntity();
    }

This allows you to successfully create a new task via PUT to the associated URI.  However, this would require you to PUT with a URI containing an unkown taskId (let's say -1) to avoid updating an existing task and trigger the creation of a new one.  This is unfortunate at best. 

A more proper approach (better semantics)  would be to POST to a new request mapping …/runtime/tasks without any id so that it can be created dynamically.  Existing POST method requires a taskId and an action (no action to create).  I'll investigate this solution further and reply back in the near future. 

Would appreciate knowing if this is located somewhere else that I am missing, or if this is an intentional omission or a bug please?

[skidvd]

I added the following new method to org.activiti.rest.service.api.runtime.task.TaskResouce to enable new task creation via POST.  Id will be determined by Activiti.

  @RequestMapping(value="/runtime/task", method = RequestMethod.POST, produces="application/json")
  public TaskResponse createTask(
      @RequestBody TaskRequest taskRequest, HttpServletRequest request) {
   
    if (taskRequest == null) {
      throw new ActivitiException("A request body was expected when updating the task.");
    }
   
    Task task = new org.activiti.engine.impl.persistence.entity.TaskEntity();

    // Populate the task properties based on the request
    populateTaskFromRequest(task, taskRequest);
   
if (task.getId() != null) {
  throw new ActivitiIllegalArgumentException("Cannot create task with a specified id");
}

    // Save the task and fetch again, it's possible that an assignment-listener has updated
    // fields after it was saved so we can't use the in-memory task
    taskService.saveTask(task);
    task = taskService.createTaskQuery().taskId(task.getId()).singleResult();
   
    return restResponseFactory.createTaskResponse(task);
  }

Still would appreciate confirmation that this is not located elsewhere and I have somehow missed it in my searches.  Also would like to know if this is an intentional omission from the REST services?

[trademak]

It's indeed missing from the userguide, could you create a JIRA issue for that?
The REST service does exists however: POST /runtime/tasks

Best regards,