Unique and dynamic Process instance id

[mraja775]

We have a business requirement for inserting a unique and a dynamic process instance id when an instance of a workflow is started.

Is there anyway in the process definition, where i can specify these variables and have them popped up on the web page when that workflow is started?

I can modify my webapp to read from the processdefinition and display the appropriate jsp page, but is it possible to add new attributes to processdefinition?

Thanks in advance
Jbpm beginner

[kukeltje]

Adding attributes or custom xml is not realy possible yet. You can achieve some things, but they might change, therefor I do not recommend these.

What I do myself is when I start a process from a bean (customized version of the jbpm 3.1 webapp (I modified the HomeBean)), I immediately set a process variable with a guid. This works great.

hth.

[icyjamie]

Relatively simple by having handlers creating/adding all sorts of vars like this (package and imports not shown):

public class VariableActionHandler implements ActionHandler {

 private String name;

 private String method;

 private String value;

 public String getName() {
 return name;
 }

 public void setName(String name) {
 this.name = name;
 }

 public String getValue() {
 return value;
 }

 public void setValue(String value) {
 this.value = value;
 }

 public String getMethod() {
 return method;
 }

 public void setMethod(String method) {
 this.method = method;
 }

 public String getValue() {
 return value;
 }

 public void setValue(String value) {
 this.value = value;
 }


 public void execute(ExecutionContext executionContext) throws Exception {
 if ("NAMEVALUE".equals(method)) {
 executionContext.getContextInstance().setVariable(name, value);
 } else {
 // perform other methods like injecting GUIDS, Unique IDS, forward to business logic, etch...
 }
 }

}

Then, in your definition, use an action e.g.

<node>
 <action class="VariableActionHandler" config-type="bean">
 <name>processId</name>
 <value>123</value>
 <method>NAMEVALUE</method>
 </action>
</node>

<node>
 <action class="VariableActionHandler" config-type="bean">
 <name>processId</name>
 <method>GENERATEGUID</method>
 </action>
</node>

[kukeltje]

Yes, but *not* at the start of a process right? If I have a start task I cannot use this. I even tried task-assign events on the start task, but was not able to set variables that could be used this way at start time.

For this reason I created a Jira issue to be able to pass variables when creating a process.