Re: Retrieving an existing workflow instance variables?

On Tuesday, May 27, 2003, at 02:02 PM, Jon Wilmoth wrote:

> First of all how do the "transientVars" and the
> "propertySet" you used in your examples relate to the
> three variables (inputs, args, and variables) that are
> described in the documentation?  Are they additional
> variables that are available to all functions?  Only
> available in an initial action function?  What type
> are these variables?
>
'variables' is gone from the current cvs version, it's all propertyset 
now. The import concept here is that we have 3 different sets of 
collections. One is a PropertySet which is a persistent collection of 
properties, the other (transientVars) is a collection of transient 
variables, that can be set as a way to pass information around during 
the execution of a step. They are not stored in a database or 
persisted. Inputs is the third type, which is a map of input parameters 
that the caller can send to the workflow when initialising it or 
executing an action. The inputs are copied to transientVars, and that's 
how code can access them.

> Is it possible to copy all inputs in the initial
> action with a prefunction definition like this
> (assumes the "propertySet" variable is of type
> com.opensymphony.module.propertyset.PropertySet)?
>
> <pre-functions>
>   <function type="beanshell">
>   <arg name="script">
>   	import java.util.Iterator;
>   	Iterator keysIterator =
> transientVars.keySet().iterator();
>   	String currentKey = null;
>   	while (keysIterator.hasNext()) {
>   		currentKey = keysIterator.hasNext();
>   		propertySet.setAsActualType(currentKey,
> transientVars.get(currentKey));
>   	}
>   </arg>
>   </function>
> </pre-functions>
>
Yep!

>
> Also, your example describes how to access these
> persisted values within the workflow definition
> document, but how do you access them from the java
> api's?  I see there are two methods that could be used
> to retrieved persisted values, but I'm not sure of the
> difference/intent of each.  Is one from persistence
> and the other from memory?  If it's from memory, where
> is it initialized?
>
All the interfaces take in a PropertySet parameter, which you can add 
stuff to as the urge takes you. You also get the inputs as a parameter. 
This is for function providers and suchlike. For 'client' code, you 
would call getPropertySet(). There is no equivelant for 
inputs/transientVars because it would be meaningless, as these do not 
exist outside of a single workflow invocation.

> java.util.Map
> com.opensymphony.workflow.Workflow.getVariableMap(long
> id)
> and
> com.opensymphony.module.propertyset.PropertySet
> com.opensymphony.workflow.spi.WorkflowStore.getPropertySet(long
> entryId)
>
>
getVariableMap is gone, the latest CVS version replaces this with 
getPropertySet(). The functionality they provide is identical, except 
that the variable maap code was terrible for performance so it was 
scrapped and the propertyset directly exposed.



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