Maximo work order tracking Android sample application

This simple Android Kotlin application demonstrates how easily developers and business partners can build their own solutions by leveraging the Maximo REST APIs. This tutorial shows how to use these APIs and provides instructions for building and testing developed applications.

Pre-requisites

• Android Studio 3.0.1 or later
• Maximo 7.6

Getting Started

Open this sample in Android Studio.

Login / Logout

This feature allows the users to login by using the built-in authentication mechanisms. The login operation is the first step that any developer must complete to use the Maximo REST APIs. Users must be authenticated and have the required permissions to perform these operations.

You must have an active Maximo user account to use these APIs.

After this method is called, it maintains a reference to a Maximo user profile that is used to determine whether the logged user is authorized to perform the requested operations.

The following example illustrates how to use this API to authenticate a user:

var options = Options().user(userName).password(password).auth("maxauth")
options = options.host(host).port(port).lean(true)
var connector = MaximoConnector(options).debug(true)
connector.connect()

It is strongly advised that you keep only a single instance of the MaximoConnector object on your application, given that it is a stateful object that keeps a reference to the logged Maximo user profile. It is not only a good practice, but it can save you time and resources from having to re-authenticate every time you invoke another method from the APIs.

To use this method, you need to build an Options object by supplying the following values:

• User and password credentials
• Hostname or IP address
• Port number

Connection or authentication failures can be handled by catching the following exception types: IOException and OslcException.

try {
    ...
    connector.connect()
} catch (e: IOException) {
    // Handle connection failures here...
} catch (e: OslcException) {
    // Handle authentication failures here...
}

To end a user session, just use the same instance of the MaximoConnector object used for the Application Login.

connector.disconnect() // Log out of Maximo

List Work Orders that are Waiting for Approval

This feature allows the users to list all work orders that are in the Waiting for Approval status and are visible to their organization and Site. This API method provides a set of input parameters that the users can supply to select a collection of work orders records.

The following code sample shows how to select a set of work order records by using options like pagination, sorting, and filtering:

var PAGE_SIZE = 5
// "mxwo" is the Object Structure defined to represent a Work Order object.
val workOrderSet = connector.resourceSet("mxwo") // This returns a ResourceSet object instance
val resultList = mutableListOf<JsonObject>() // Creates an empty list to hold JsonObject instances.
workOrderSet.paging(true) // Enable pagination.
workOrderSet.pageSize(PAGE_SIZE) // Set the page size.
// Use the following query to skip tasks and only fetch Work Orders that are "Waiting for Approval"
workOrderSet.where("spi:istask=0 and spi:status=\"WAPPR\"")
workOrderSet.orderBy("spi:wonum") // Ordering by Work Order Number
workOrderSet.fetch()
var i = 0
while (i.toInt() < PAGE_SIZE) {
    val resource = workOrderSet.member(i) // Return a Resource instance
    i = i.inc()
    val jsonObject = resource.toJSON() // Convert a Resource to a JsonObject representation
    resultList.add(jsonObject) // Add retrieved JsonObject instance to the list
}

ResourceSet Component

Developers who built solutions for Maximo Asset Management in the past might notice that the Maximo REST API classes Resource and ResourceSet are similar to the Mbo/MboSet pair that is available in the Maximo business object framework.

By using an instance of the MaximoConnector class, you can fetch a ResourceSet object for any of the object structures that are published in the Maximo REST API.

The following example shows how to obtain an instance of the ResourceSet class for the MXWO object structure that holds the work order records information.

   val workOrderSet = connector.resourceSet("mxwo") // This returns a ResourceSet object instance

After you hold an instance of the ResourseSet class, you can perform actions like searching for existing records, ordering records by a specific set of columns, fetching a records page, and more.

The following list shows the most commonly used actions and input parameters that can be provided to select work order records:

• fetch(): Fetches a set of records according to the input parameters that are provided.
• load(): Loads a set of records according to the input parameters that are provided.
• count(): Returns the count for the current number of records that are loaded into this set.
• totalCount(): Returns the total count (remote) for all records that are persisted for this set (Object Structure).
• nextPage(): Fetches the next page of records for this set.
• previousPage(): Fetches the previous page of records for this set.
• member(value : Int): Returns an element that was previously loaded into this set by using the specified index position.

    workOrderSet.fetch()
    workOrderSet.load()
    var count = workOrderSet.count()
    var totalCount = workOrderSet.totalCount()
    workOrderSet.nextPage()
    workOrderSet.previousPage()
    var resourceObject = workOrderSet.member(0)

• oslc.select: A String var-args parameter that allows the user to fetch a set of properties for the selected objects instead of loading all their properties. This parameter is useful for applications that are developed for environments that have small memory footprints.

    workOrderSet.select("spi:wonum", "spi:description", "spi:status")

• oslc.where: A String parameter that allows the user to define a SQL-based where clause to filter the record set.

   workOrderSet.where("spi:istask=0 and spi:status='WAPPR'")

• oslc.paging: A flag that enables or disables paging for the selected record set.

   workOrderSet.paging(true)

• oslc.pageSize: An integer parameter that defines the page size for the selected record set.

   workOrderSet.pageSize(5)

• oslc.orderBy: A String var-args parameter that allows the user to define a set the properties that are used to sort the obtained record set.

   workOrderSet.orderBy("spi:wonum")

• oslc.searchTerms: A String var-args parameter that performs record-wide text searchs for the tokens that are specified.

   workOrderSet.searchTerms("pump", "broken")

After these elements are successfully loaded into the ResourceSet, they must be convered into a friendly data format that is usable inside the application context. That's when JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) objects are used.

    val resourceObject = workOrderSet.member(0) // I am a Resource object
    val jsonObject = resourceObject.toJSON() // I am a JSON object, 
                                             // much more friendly and human-readable.

The Resource class is simply a data object representation of an object structure. It provides several utility methods to update, merge, add or even delete an Object Structure. It also provides methods to allow conversions to other data types like: JSON or byte arrays. In the previous example, after a previously loaded Resource object is fetched, it is converted to its JSON object representation.

Up to this point, we expect you to be able to list and view data that is provided by the Maximo REST APIs, through the use of the methods exhibited in this tutorial. In the remainder of this tutorial, we aim to demonstrate how to modify and create new persistent data records.

Create/Update a Work Order

Before we discuss the actual methods available for updating and creating new data records, we need to provide some background information about how these methods actually work.

JSON

REST APIs usually rely on JSON format to transport data between the client and the server. Hence, in order to modify or create records, you need to provide a JSON representation of the record you wish to modify or create as an input for the API method.

Building and modifying JSON structures can be easily accomplished by the use of specific APIs, almost every modern programming language provides a set of APIs to build and manipulate JSON. In this tutorial, we exhibit a very simple example of how to build JSON objects in the Android/Kotlin programming language.

// This creates a JsonObjectBuilder component.
var objectBuilder = Json.createObjectBuilder()
// Adding 'WONUM' attribute to the JSON structure.
objectBuilder.add("wonum", wonum.text.toString())
// Adding 'SITEID' attribute.
objectBuilder.add("siteid", MaximoAPI.INSTANCE.loggedUser.getString("locationsite"))
// Adding 'ORGID' attribute.
objectBuilder.add("orgid", MaximoAPI.INSTANCE.loggedUser.getString("locationorg"))
// This returns a JsonObject instance.
objectBuilder.build()

The objectBuilder component works similar to a Map data structure. It holds a key-value pair for every attribute that is added to the Object Builder. After you have finished setting up the attributes, you just need to invoke the build() method and it returns a JsonObject instance that is required for updating/creating records through the Maximo REST APIs.

Creating a Work Order

The process for creating a new Work Order is very simple. The most complex piece is building a JSON object that represents a new Work Order record. This can sometimes be a little time consuming, given the large number of attributes available in the MXWO Object Structure. Also, it is very important that you observe the following set of rules:

• All Maximo field and attribute rules and validations are also applicable when using the Maximo REST API methods.
• Make sure that all the required fields have values.
• Take special care with domain attributes, so that you don't end up using an invalid value.

If you follow these instructions you'll likely avoid some exceptions, headaches and save some time. Now that you have the JSON object, you need to build the URI used as an argument for the create() method available

This is a very simplified code example for creating a new Work Order:

// Building a new Work Order JSON object.
var workOrder = buildWorkOrderJSON()
// Using the MaximoConnector object previously obtained during 
// the Application Login to build the URI string.
var uri = connector.currentURI + "/os/mxwo"
// Invoking the create() method available in the MaximoConnector component.
connector.create(uri, workOrder)

Updating a Work Order

The update method works in the same way that the create method does. Therefore, all the instructions provided in the previous section are also applicable here.

This method also takes two arguments as input. The first argument is the URI which is used to identify which object is to be updated. In the update process, the URI is composed by a concatenation of the Object Structure context path and the Object ID.

This is an example of a URI for a Work Order object with ID 1022.

// URI = http://<IP>:<PORT>/maximo/oslc/os/mxwo/1022
var uri = connector.currentURI + "/os/mxwo/" + workOrder.getJsonNumber("workorderid")

The second argument is an updated copy of the original JsonObject. Here is another simplified example on how to update an existing Work Order:

// Obtaining an updated instance of the Work Order.
var updatedWorkOrder = updateWorkOrder(originalWorkOrder)
// Using the MaximoConnector object previously obtained during 
// the Application Login to build the URI string.
var uri = connector.currentURI + "/os/mxwo/" + updatedWorkOrder.getJsonNumber("workorderid")
// Invoking the update() method available in the MaximoConnector component.
connector.update(uri, updatedWorkOrder)

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