IntegratingJBPMIntoAppFusePartTrois

Part I: Integrating jBPM into AppFuse - Integrate jBPM Support (via Spring-Modules) into AppFuse.
Part II: Integrating jBPM into AppFuse Part Deux - Setup AppFuse/jBPM in Eclipse, model defintions using the Jbpm Process Designer.
Part III: Integrating jBPM into AppFuse Part Trois - Enhance defintions to support tasks, users, schedule and injecting spring beans into actions.

About this tutorial

Table of Contents

• [1] Create JBPM Schema Ant Tasks
• [2] Enhance Process Defintion by creating and assigning tasks
• [3] Write test case to validate Process Definition execution
• [4] Enhance Process Defintion by creating ActionHandlers (DecisionHandler)
• [5] Write test case to validate new Process Definition execution
• [6] Wire spring beans inside jBPM Actions
• [7] Test spring bean execution

[#1] Create JBPM Schema Ant Tasks

Create the following packages:
org.appfuse.jbpm.config
org.appfuse.jbpm.action

The following files are from the Jbpm Starter Kit (see IntegratingJBPMIntoAppFuse for the download link) :-

Copy these files to org.appfuse.jbpm.config:
1. jbpm/src/config.files/hibernate.cfg.xml
2. jbpm/src/resources/hsqldb/create.db.hibernate.properties
3. jbpm/src/resources/hsqldb/identity.db.xml

create.db.hibernate.properties does require modification . It has to point to the Jbpm datasource (same as the one defined in Part I).

hibernate.dialect=org.hibernate.dialect.MySQLInnoDBDialect
hibernate.connection.driver_class=com.mysql.jdbc.Driver
hibernate.connection.url=jdbc:mysql://localhost/jbpm?useUnicode=true&characterEncoding=utf-8
hibernate.connection.username=root
hibernate.connection.password=
hibernate.show_sql=true

hibernate.cache.provider_class=org.hibernate.cache.HashtableCacheProvider

You might want to change the cache provider for production usage to a more robust one such as Ecache. If you plan on sticking with this one, ensure that dao.compile.classpath in properties.xml contains this reference:

<!-- DAO -->
<path id="dao.compile.classpath">
...
<pathelement location="${commons-collections.jar}"/>
...
</path>

identity.db.xml contains users/group/participation data. It can be modified to your liking. More on this later when we delve into creating / assinging tasks in the workflow.

And finally add these targets to your main AppFuse build.xml file:

  <target name="build.processes" description="builds the example processes">
        <copy todir="build/dao/gen/org/appfuse/jbpm/process/test">
          <fileset dir="src/dao/org/appfuse/jbpm/process/test" /> 
        </copy> 
        <zip destfile="build/dao/gen/org/appfuse/jbpm/process/test.process">
          <fileset dir="build/dao/gen/org/appfuse/jbpm/process/test" /> 
        </zip> 
  </target>

  <target name="clean_jbpm" depends="build.processes, declare.jbpm.tasks" description="refreshes jbpm database">
   <jbpmschema actions="drop" 
                  cfg="src/dao/org/appfuse/jbpm/config/hibernate.cfg.xml" 
                  properties="src/dao/org/appfuse/jbpm/config/create.db.hibernate.properties"/> 
   <jbpmschema actions="create" 
                  cfg="src/dao/org/appfuse/jbpm/config/hibernate.cfg.xml" 
                  properties="src/dao/org/appfuse/jbpm/config/create.db.hibernate.properties"/> 
   <deployprocess cfg="src/dao/org/appfuse/jbpm/config/hibernate.cfg.xml" 
                  properties="src/dao/org/appfuse/jbpm/config/create.db.hibernate.properties">
      <fileset dir="build/dao/gen/org/appfuse/jbpm/process" includes="*.process" />
   </deployprocess>                
   <loadidentities file="src/dao/org/appfuse/jbpm/config/identity.db.xml"
                  cfg="src/dao/org/appfuse/jbpm/config/hibernate.cfg.xml" 
                  properties="src/dao/org/appfuse/jbpm/config/create.db.hibernate.properties"/>
  </target>

 <target name="declare.jbpm.tasks">
    <taskdef classpathref="dao.compile.classpath"  resource="org/jbpm/ant/jbpm.ant.tasks.properties" format="properties"></taskdef>
  </target>

Execute ant clean_jbpm and watch the magic happen!