JBossDeveloper

i was thinking a direct link.

in the jpdl process:

<start form="forms/StartForm.form">...

assertEquals("forms/StartForm.form", getStartFormResourceName("MyProcess", null) );

myprocess.jpdl.xml
forms/StartForm.form

But then my question again

There should also be a method on the taskservice to get the form for a normal task, why also have a special separate method to retrieve a form on the start activity if you already need a special method to retrieve the start activity?

Yeah, I think this kind of indirection is missing in the task forms yet, we already discussed about that:
http://www.jboss.org/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&t=155048&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=10

i'm adding these two to the repository service:

/** find all the activity names of the start activities for a given
 * process definition. Only top level activities are scanned.
 * Every activity that doesn't have incoming transitions is considered
 * a start activity. For the moment, jPDL only supports one
 * start activity. Start activity names can be null. */
 List<String> getStartActivityNames(String processDefinitionId);

 /** the resource name for the given start activity. It is assumed that
 * the ProcessDefinition is already retrieved. From the ProcessDefinition,
 * the {@link ProcessDefinition#getId()} and the {@link ProcessDefinition#getDeploymentId()}
 * can be retrieved. The activityName can be obtained via {@link #getStartActivityNames(String)}.
 * An InputStream for the resource can be obtained with {@link #getResourceAsStream(String, String)} */
 String getStartFormResourceName(String processDefinitionId, String activityName);

here's the example usage (ProcessDefinitionStartFormTest):

public void testFormInUnnamedStartActivity() {
 String deploymentDbid =
 repositoryService.createDeployment()
 .addResourceFromString("xmlstring.jpdl.xml",
 "<process name='make print'>" +
 " <start form='org/jbpm/test/process/ProcessDefinitionStartForm.form' />" +
 "</process>"
 )
 .addResourceFromClasspath("org/jbpm/test/process/ProcessDefinitionStartForm.form")
 .deploy();

 registerDeployment(deploymentDbid);

 ProcessDefinition processDefinition =
 repositoryService
 .createProcessDefinitionQuery()
 .processDefinitionName("make print")
 .uniqueResult();

 String processDefinitionId = processDefinition.getId();

 List<String> startActivityNames = repositoryService.getStartActivityNames(processDefinitionId );
 List<String> expectedStartActivityNames = new ArrayList<String>();
 expectedStartActivityNames.add(null);

 assertEquals(expectedStartActivityNames, startActivityNames);

 String startFormResourceName = repositoryService.getStartFormResourceName(processDefinitionId, null);

 assertEquals("org/jbpm/test/process/ProcessDefinitionStartForm.form", startFormResourceName);

 InputStream formInputStream = repositoryService.getResourceAsStream(processDefinition.getDeploymentId(), startFormResourceName);

 String formContents = new String(IoUtil.readBytes(formInputStream));
 assertEquals("start task form", formContents);
 }

 public void testFormInNamedStartActivity() {
 String deploymentDbid =
 repositoryService.createDeployment()
 .addResourceFromString("xmlstring.jpdl.xml",
 "<process name='make print'>" +
 " <start name='start' form='org/jbpm/test/process/ProcessDefinitionStartForm.form' />" +
 "</process>"
 )
 .addResourceFromClasspath("org/jbpm/test/process/ProcessDefinitionStartForm.form")
 .deploy();

 registerDeployment(deploymentDbid);

 ProcessDefinition processDefinition =
 repositoryService
 .createProcessDefinitionQuery()
 .processDefinitionName("make print")
 .uniqueResult();

 String processDefinitionId = processDefinition.getId();

 List<String> startActivityNames = repositoryService.getStartActivityNames(processDefinitionId );
 List<String> expectedStartActivityNames = new ArrayList<String>();
 expectedStartActivityNames.add("start");

 assertEquals(expectedStartActivityNames, startActivityNames);

 String startFormResourceName = repositoryService.getStartFormResourceName(processDefinitionId, "start");

 assertEquals("org/jbpm/test/process/ProcessDefinitionStartForm.form", startFormResourceName);

 InputStream formInputStream = repositoryService.getResourceAsStream(processDefinition.getDeploymentId(), startFormResourceName);

 String formContents = new String(IoUtil.readBytes(formInputStream));
 assertEquals("start task form", formContents);
 }