Start process with form

[heiko.braun]

Can you guys shed some light on this:
https://jira.jboss.org/jira/browse/JBPM-2233

And come to an agreement (including API)?

[tom.baeyens]

thanks for signalling this.

in the api i'll add

Collection<String> ExecutionService.getStartNames(String processDefinitionId);

String TaskService.getStartForm(String processDefinitionId, String startName);

later today. is that ok ?

[heiko.braun]

Can you elaborate on that? I don't understand what you mean?

[kukeltje]

Eleborate on what? With the combination of these two calls you can retrieve the form that should be used for starting the process *before* starting it. When this form is submitted and all fields validate, a processinstance should be started. The 'thanks for signalling' was probably meant as a 'thanks I forgot about this'.

Is there anything else that needs clarification?

[heiko.braun]

Sorry, but this

Collection<String> ExecutionService.getStartNames(String processDefinitionId);

String TaskService.getStartForm(String processDefinitionId, String startName);

is not self explaining.

What is a "start name"? Name of a form? Name of an activity?

[heiko.braun]

What does the return value of TaskService.getStartForm mean? A template name? The template blob?

[heiko.braun]

"given a set of names
{n1 , . . . , nk } and a set of concepts {c1 , . . . , ck }, it
should be easy for anyone to associate the names with the right concepts
without looking them up in the documentation."

[heiko.braun]

Sometimes it also helps using classes to express certain concepts instead of solely using string across an API.

[kukeltje]

Ok.. now I understand more what you were asking. And I agree, it is not clear (at least if a put aside my assumptions)

Executionservice is, afaik, not about forms so I'd not expect 'start name' to be a form name but rather an activity.

But in that case the 'getStartForm' is superfluous since imo the normal method for retrieving a task form could or even should be used.

[camunda]

Maybe we could rename it to make it clear?

Collection<String> ExecutionService.getStartActivityNames(String processDefinitionId);

String TaskService.getStartForm(String processDefinitionId, String startActivityName);

[tom.baeyens]

ok. probably also the getStartForm should be renamed to getStartFormResourceName(...), as it points to the resource in the business archive where the form can be fetched with repositoryService.getResourceAsStream(String,String)

Collection<String> ExecutionService.getStartActivityNames(String processDefinitionId);

String TaskService.getStartFormResourceName(String processDefinitionId, String startActivityName);

[heiko.braun]

Yes, but besides that. What identifies a "start form"? How would a deployment look like?

[tom.baeyens]

can you elaborate ? i don't get what you mean yet.

[tom.baeyens]

that's funny. just noticed we turned our questions around :-)

[heiko.braun]

getStartFormResourceName(...)

how does the engine know what initial form is? by naming convention?
what do you put into a .bar archive?