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workflow-activerecord

ActiveRecord/Rails Integration for the Workflow library

Major+minor versions of workflow-activerecord are based on the oldest compatible ActiveRecord API. To use workflow with Rails/ActiveRecord 6.0, 6.1, 7.0 please use:

gem 'workflow-activerecord', '~> 6.0'

This will also automatically include the newest compatible version of the core 'workflow' gem. But you can also choose a specific version:

gem 'workflow', '~> 2.0'
gem 'workflow-activerecord', '~> 4.1'

Please also have a look at the sample application!

For detailed introduction into workflow DSL please read the workflow README!

State persistence with ActiveRecord

Workflow library can handle the state persistence fully automatically. You only need to define a string field on the table called workflow_state and include the workflow mixin in your model class as usual:

class Order < ApplicationRecord
  include WorkflowActiverecord
  workflow do
    # list states and transitions here
  end
end

On a database record loading all the state check methods e.g. article.state, article.awaiting_review? are immediately available. For new records or if the workflow_state field is not set the state defaults to the first state declared in the workflow specification. In our example it is :new, so Article.new.new? returns true and Article.new.approved? returns false.

At the end of a successful state transition like article.approve! the new state is immediately saved in the database.

You can change this behaviour by overriding persist_workflow_state method.

Scopes

Workflow library also adds automatically generated scopes with names based on states names:

class Order < ApplicationRecord
  include WorkflowActiverecord
  workflow do
    state :approved
    state :pending
  end
end

# returns all orders with `approved` state
Order.with_approved_state

# returns all orders with `pending` state
Order.with_pending_state

Custom workflow database column

meuble contributed a solution for using custom persistence column easily, e.g. for a legacy database schema:

class LegacyOrder < ApplicationRecord
  include WorkflowActiverecord

  workflow_column :foo_bar # use this legacy database column for
                           # persistence
end

Single table inheritance

Single table inheritance is also supported. Descendant classes can either inherit the workflow definition from the parent or override with its own definition.

Custom Versions of Existing Adapters

Other adapters (such as a custom ActiveRecord plugin) can be selected by adding a workflow_adapter class method, eg.

class Example < ApplicationRecord
  def self.workflow_adapter
    MyCustomAdapter
  end
  include Workflow

  # ...
end

(The above will include MyCustomAdapter instead of the default WorkflowActiverecord adapter.)

Multiple Workflows

I am frequently asked if it's possible to represent multiple "workflows" in an ActiveRecord class.

The solution depends on your business logic and how you want to structure your implementation.

Use Single Table Inheritance

One solution can be to do it on the class level and use a class hierarchy. You can use single table inheritance so there is only single orders table in the database. Read more in the chapter "Single Table Inheritance" of the ActiveRecord documentation. Then you define your different classes:

class Order < ActiveRecord::Base
  include WorkflowActiverecord
end

class SmallOrder < Order
  workflow do
    # workflow definition for small orders goes here
  end
end

class BigOrder < Order
  workflow do
    # workflow for big orders, probably with a longer approval chain
  end
end

Individual workflows for objects

Another solution would be to connect different workflows to object instances via metaclass, e.g.

# Load an object from the database
booking = Booking.find(1234)

# Now define a workflow - exclusively for this object,
# probably depending on some condition or database field
if # some condition
  class << booking
    include WorkflowActiverecord
    workflow do
      state :state1
      state :state2
    end
  end
# if some other condition, use a different workflow

You can also encapsulate this in a class method or even put in some ActiveRecord callback. Please also have a look at the full working example!

on_transition

You can have a look at an advanced on_transition example in this test file.

Changelog

New in the version 6.0.0

  • GH-14 retire Ruby 2.6 and Rails 5.* and older since they have reached end of live; please use workflow-activerecord 4.1.9, if you still depend on those versions

New in the version 4.1.9

  • GH-13 Switch CI (continuous integration) from travis-CI to GitHub
  • Tested Rails 7.0 support

Support

Reporting bugs

http://github.com/geekq/workflow-activerecord/issues

About

Author: Vladimir Dobriakov, https://infrastructure-as-code.de

Copyright (c) 2010-2022 Vladimir Dobriakov and Contributors

Copyright (c) 2008-2009 Vodafone

Copyright (c) 2007-2008 Ryan Allen, FlashDen Pty Ltd

Based on the work of Ryan Allen and Scott Barron

Licensed under MIT license, see the LICENSE file.