OpenWFEru quickstart

make sure you are using Ruby 1.8.5 at least

   $ sudo gem install -y rufus-mnemo openwferu

your first OpenWFEru powered program

edit a file named ‘openwferu.rb‘

require 'rubygems'
require 'openwfe/def'
require 'openwfe/workitem'
require 'openwfe/engine/engine'

#
# instantiating an engine

engine = OpenWFE::Engine.new

#
# adding some participants

engine.register_participant :alice do |workitem|
    puts "alice got a workitem..."
    workitem.alice_comment = "this thing looks interesting"
end

engine.register_participant :bob do |workitem|
    puts "bob got a workitem..."
    workitem.bob_comment = "not for me, I prefer VB"
    workitem.bob_comment2 = "Bob rules"
end

engine.register_participant :summarize do |workitem|
    puts 
    puts "summary of process #{workitem.fei.workflow_instance_id}"
    workitem.attributes.each do |k, v|
        next unless k.match ".*_comment$"
        puts " - #{k} : '#{v}'"
    end
end

#
# a process definition

class TheProcessDefinition0 < OpenWFE::ProcessDefinition
    sequence do
        concurrence do
            participant :alice
            participant :bob
        end
        participant :summarize
    end
end

#
# launching the process

li = OpenWFE::LaunchItem.new(TheProcessDefinition0)

li.initial_comment = "please give your impressions about http://ruby-lang.org"

fei = engine.launch li
    #
    # 'fei' means FlowExpressionId, the fei returned here is the
    # identifier for the root expression of the newly launched process

puts "started process '#{fei.workflow_instance_id}'"

engine.wait_for fei
    #
    # blocks until the process terminates

run that file

    $ ruby openwferu.rb

there should be an output like that one :

    alice got a workitem...
    bob got a workitem...

    summary of process 1173232330251
     - bob_comment : 'not for me, I prefer VB'
     - alice_comment : 'this thing looks interesting'
     - initial_comment : 'please give your impressions about http://ruby-lang.org'

further steps

There are two key concepts in OpenWFEru : business processes and participants.

Business processes are defined via trees of expressions named process definitions. Learn more about each of the expressions.

OpenWFEru comes with a growing set of predefined participants.

To set up a standalone or an embedded OpenWFEru engine, you can take inspiration in the engine template.

questions

Feel free to ask them on the users mailing list.

(uninstalling openwferu)

Maybe OpenWFEru isn’t for you :

    $ sudo gem uninstall openwferu

(the openwferu gem depends on the gems ‘rufus-lru’, ‘rufus-scheduler’, ‘rufus-eval’ and ‘rufus-dollar’. You might want to remove them as well)