Workflow

Changes for version 0.10 - 2004-10-12

Workflow
- POTENTIAL BACKWARD INCOMPATIBILITY
  - Since we've now got 'resulting_state' in a state's action that is
- dependent on the action results of the previous action being run (see Workflow::State change), we cannot set the 'new' workflow state before executing the action.
  - One result: you shouldn't set the 'state' property of any created
- Workflow::History objects -- we'll modify the state of any history objects with an empty state before saving them (see changes for Workflow::Factory)
  - Another result: the value of '$wf->state' inside your
- Action now refers to the EXISTING state of the workflow not the SOON TO BE state. Earlier versions had the SOON TO BE state set into the workflow before executing the action to make things less confusing. Now that it's changed any code you have using the state of the workflow (such as in our example 'Trouble Ticket' application in eg/ticket/) will give a different value than the previous Workflow version.
  - This behavior seems more consistent, but comments/suggestions
- are welcome.
- In 'execute_action()' -- once we're done executing the main action, check to see if our new state is an autorun state, and if so run it.
Workflow::Action::Null
- New class: use if you want to move the workflow from one state to another without actually doing anything.
Workflow::Condition::Evaluate
- New class: allow inline conditions expressed as Perl code in the 'test' attribution of 'condition'; has access to the values in the current workflow context in a Safe compartment.
Workflow::Factory
- In save_workflow(), call 'set_new_state()' with the workflow state on all unsaved Workflow::History objects before saving them.
Workflow::State
- Add 'autorun' property and 'get_autorun_action_name()' to retrieve the single valid action name available from an autorun state.
- The 'resulting_state' property of an action within a state can now be multivalued, which means the next state depends on the return value of the action that's executed. For instance, we might have:
- <state name="create user"> <action name="create"> <resulting_state return="admin" state="assign as admin" /> <resulting_state return="helpdesk" state="assign as helpdesk" /> <resulting_state return="*" state="assign as luser" /> </action> ....
  - So if the action 'create' returns 'admin', the new state will be
- 'assign as admin'; on 'helpdesk' it will be 'assign as helpdesk', and all other values will go to state 'assign as luser'.
  - Existing behavior (actions returning nothing for a single
- 'resulting_state') is unchanged.