Using Activiti Engine in my Web Application

[mfm]

Hi,

I'm new to activiti and I really need help.

I have a python/django web app, and I want to use activiti engine in it.

According to the official book (activiti in action) I understand that there are two ways to connect the two.
Through REST API, or the one I'm trying to use, embedding activiti engine in a java application. Which for what I understand, I would only have to put the jars and it's dependencies in my web application. I'm I right here? If I use it as embedding I do not need REST API?

My biggest doubt comes now. How do I make my web application ready to receive the .bar file that I deploy through eclipse?
Is pyactiviti (Python library which wraps Activiti BPMN2.0 Engine API) anywhere near what I need?

I'm really lost here, and any help would be appreciated.

Regards,
Mónica Casanova

[trademak]

Hi,

Running Activiti embedded with the Java JARs means that you don't have to use the REST API, that's correct.
You don't need to deploy a BAR file, it can also be a single BPMN 2.0 XML file. The Activiti Engine will store this in the Activiti database.
pyactiviti is a library I'm not familiar with as it's not part of the Activiti project.

Best regards,

[mfm]

Hi,

thank you very much for your answer, it put me in the right path.

I understand that the Activiti Engine will store the XML file in the Activiti database, what I don't understand is how my application will recognised it. I mean, do I have to program in python in order to fetch the file and run it? is that it?
I really don't understand how python will grab that file and run it.. isn't there an API to do this? Because I can't find anything about this anywhere.

And by activiti database you mean the database I'm connected to, not the in-memory one, right?

Regards,
Mónica Casanova

[mfm]

Hi,

Thank you very much for your answer, it put me in the right path.

I understand that the BPMN 2.0 XML file will be stored in the Activiti Database, what I don't understand is how my application will recognise it and run it. If I have to programm it, shouldn't there be a python-acitiviti API? Because I have looked everywhere and I can't seem to find anything about this.. maybe I'm understanding this wrong, but I can't understand how python will recognise the file and run it without it.

Regards,
Mónica Casanova

[trademak]

Hi,

Activiti offers an API to retrieve process definitions, start process instances etc.
There's the RepositoryService and the RuntimeService for example.
If pyactiviti also exposes these interfaces I don't know, but I would definitely expect it.

Best regards,