array of files used by workflow-object in perl

Hello,

[TeamSite 4.5.1 on Solaris]

i tried to start a new job out of a perl-script (external task of another workflow) and it works fine (not via clt). The only thing not working is attaching files at starting time. I used the following code:
--------------------------------------------------
TeamSite::WFtemplate->new(
template => $template_file,
template_name => $iw_template_name,
user => $iw_user,
role => $user_role,
vpath => $vpath,
file => [],
debug => 0);

# i got a filelist from the actual task via
my (@files) = $task->GetFiles();

foreach $file (@files) {
$wft->{file}[$i]="$file";
$i++;
}
---------------------------------------

After invoking the new workflow, no files are attached. Anybody knows, what i can do? I think, a special structured array is used for this, but i don't know the structure.

Thanks,
Steve

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Comments

Migrateduser

When I did this, it added the list of files to the $wft->{file} array. Are you certain your $task->GetFiles() is returning a list of filenames? I have never seen anyone create a job this way. Why are you using WFtemplate to create a new job? How do you actually instantiate a new job using this method?

Dave Smith
Sr. Software Engineer
Nike Global eBusiness Tools & Automation
(503) 671-4238
DavidH.Smith@nike.com

Dave Smith
DavidH.Smith@nike.com

sbaumann

Hello Dave,

yes, it added the list of files, but the files array in the wft-object needs another structure than the array from $task->GetFiles. After adding the files this way, i can not instantiate a workflow from this template. I think, the structure maybee needs also description for the attached files.
I didn't solve this problem, but now i instantiate a workflow with an empty array and after this i get the new jobid/taskid and attach the files while looping the array with iwaddtaskfile.

-------------------------------------
#You can build a wft-object

my $wft =
TeamSite::WFtemplate->new(
template => $template_file,
template_name => $iw_template_name,
user => $iw_user,
role => $user_role,
vpath => $vpath,
file => [],
debug => 0);

# then set some variables for replacing special tags in the wft-file

$wft->{tag}{'iw_user'}{value}="$iw_user";
$wft->{tag}{'reviewer'}{value}="$user";

# then parse the wft-file and replace __ELEM__ tags

my @field_name_set = $wft->get_tags();

# now you will get the clean specification by

my $spec = $wft->get_workflow();

# and now you can instantiate a new workflow
# $wf_tmp is a temporary directory used for this prozess

my $wf_system = TeamSite::WFsystem->new();
my $wf = $wf_system->CreateWorkflow($spec,$wf_tmp);

# at the end you only have to invoke your new job

my $job = $wf->Invoke();

-----------------------------------
We do this out of an CGI-Task of another Workflow and had some problems using command line tools to create a new workflow. That's why, i use this perl objects.

Mit freundlichen Gruessen / Best Regards

Steve Baumann
Senior Consultant

Tel: +49-178-8855-717
Fax: +49-178-998855-717
mailto: steve.baumann@avinci.de

Avinci - The Know-How Company
Insterburger Str. 7
D-60478 Frankfurt
http://www.avinci.biz

xcelerator007

It sounds like you're trying to create a nested workflow passing a file list to the instantiated job. If you're using TeamSite 5.x, you might want to consider using <wftask>. There is an example of this in iw-home/local/config/wft/examples/author_assignment_with_nested_job.wft

Migrateduser

He did mention he's using TS 4.5.1

Dave Smith
Sr. Software Engineer
Nike, Inc.
(503) 671-4238
DavidH.Smith@nike.com

xcelerator007

I realize that but sbaumann may not know about the many wonders of TeamSite 5... cheers!

Forfiles.zip

sbaumann

hello,
i know the features of TS5, but our client decided to switch to version 5 not before end of this year. That's why we have to use version 4.5.1 and so we cannot use nested workflows :-(

Mit freundlichen Gruessen / Best Regards

Steve Baumann

Tel: +49-178-8855-717
Fax: +49-178-998855-717
mailto: steve.baumann@avinci.de

plazm

Hello,
wftask doesn't really help much. If you use a workflow template, it is gonna hang in your task list until you manually select "start nested job". If you want it to kick start automatically, you need to create a job specification file anyway and say "jobfile" instead of wftfile in your nested workflow. BTW, jobfile is not properly documented.

regards,
A.

Migrateduser

What are you talking about?

Dave Smith
Sr. Software Engineer
Nike, Inc.
(503) 671-4238
DavidH.Smith@nike.com

plazm

To start a nested job automatically you need to generate a job specification file. This is described in the manual. So my point is: if you want it to start automatically you have to parse wft anyway.

Migrateduser

You can certainly create a job spec file without using a workflow template. A job spec file is just an XML formatted file. The only reason you'd need a workflow template is if you need any user input prior to creating the job spec.

Dave Smith
Sr. Software Engineer
Nike, Inc.
(503) 671-4238
DavidH.Smith@nike.com

plazm

Yes, I am aware of the fact that I can generate an XML any way I want. Again, in this particular case (when you have a WFT and you wanna use it) wftask is useless (at least I have not found any means to start a nested workflow from wft automatically). This is my point.

To prevent a flame, let's consider thes. The following is GIVEN:
1) TeamSite 5
2) some_workflow.wft
3) some_nested_workflow.wft (requires user input)

I need to start (instantiate) some_nested_workflow.wft from some_workflow _automatically_.

The question is: how can I do this using <wftask>?

Regards,
A.

Migrateduser

I would say that <wfttask> in general is not properly documented. What specifically are you getting at when you say that "jobfile" is not properly documented. I'm guessing that you mean there is some gotcha that one should be aware of. I don't suppose you would mind telling us what that is?

Migrateduser

I'm actually tackling a very similar issue. I have a workflow that will sometimes be manually started as a new_job workflow, other times it should be started as a <wftask>.

The easy solution would be to generate a job spec once from the wft (using iw_output_file), and then go through and replace all the values with placeholders, read it in right before I need it and do a bunch of regex substitutions to get what I want. This is what most of us do most of the time.

However, there's a maintenance issue in that if you change the WFT, you would have to go through and regenerate the job spec, and redo all the substitutions, so I thought, why not write my own instantiator, pass it key-value pairs and generate the spec directly from the wft immediately prior to using it.

The attached code comes within a hair of doing what I want, but it doesn't seem to be running the <template_script>. I thought perhaps I needed to do this directly, so I added the eval, but that still doesn't get me where I need to be, presumably because the results of the eval are not in scope when I make the call to get_workflow() (haven't really investigated that thoroughly, but it's my hypothesis).

NOTE: This is NOT indicative of the sort of code I turn out in production. This is just the current state of a pet research project that will be rewritten properly if I can prove the concept.

Cheers,
Rob Huffstedtler
rob@bagpipe.com

Migrateduser

Actually figured out that it is running the <template_script>. My debug section was bad, because I used double quotes around the filename, so the backslashes needed to be escaped. Oops!

Anyway, in testing it against the author_assignment.wft workflow, and running through the debugger, I figured out that it's not interpolating __VALUE__, which makes sense if you read the perldoc. For some reason, __VALUE__ only pulls its tags from GET/POST key value pairs. In other words, if you aren't running it in the context of a CGI - they aren't available, even if they are set up in the hash of of tag values. This is sort of lame, in my opinion. I'm going to tinker with it a bit later and post a corrected version.

Cheers
Rob Huffstedtler
rob@bagpipe.com

starding

Hi

I think the discussion is getting away from the initial question: the problem about adding files to a task;-)
I think you have to add the files to the new job (task) manually just after invoking the new job.
Have you tried somthing like this:

# Add a file to the task, given the taskID,
# the filename and (optionally) a comment
# The file is added in the workarea that the task belongs to.

use TeamSite::WFtask;
my $comment = "some comment";

my $newtask = new TeamSite::WFtask($taskID); #that is a task in the new job ;-)
if($newtask->IsValid())
{
foreach $file (@files) { # your array of files
$newtask->AddFile($file, $comment);
}
} else {
open(LOGFILE, ">/tmp/mylogfile.log")
print LOGFILE "task " . $taskID . " not valid\n";
close LOGFILE;
}

This worked for me, (also in TS 4.51 ;-)

regards, Søren Tarding, IconMedialab

Migrateduser

Look at Steve's post in this thread dated 6/21 - he states that he adds the files manually after the new job is created. This was already covered.

Dave Smith
Sr. Software Engineer
Nike, Inc.
(503) 671-4238
DavidH.Smith@nike.com

sbaumann

Hello,

yes, we add the files in the same way. I only thought, it would be a better way to do this with the array while create the wf-object.

Best regards

Steve

Migrateduser

I never did get a reply from my Interwoven contact regarding that arrayref. Did you ever figure it out?

Dave Smith
Sr. Software Engineer
Nike, Inc.
(503) 671-4238
DavidH.Smith@nike.com

Migrateduser

Hi,

Interwoven engineer here. With respect to the original thread, it needs to be made clear that the {file} element in the WFtemplate object doesn't necessarily do anything at all to add files to a workflow. The code for inserting files into a task at WF compilation/instantiation time needs to reside in the WF template itself (i.e., .wft file). More often than not, that code is *not* digging into the WFtemplate object, but rather, it is code like this (taken from a recent incarnation of default_submit.wft):


# make sure the file list is defined
my @submit_file = ();                      # files sorted in unencoded
if (__ELEM__('iw_file'))                   # form, then html-encoded
{                                          # by hand via CGI_lite
@submit_file = map { TeamSite::CGI_lite::escape_html_data($_);
  } sort  __VALUE__('iw_file');
}

Given the above, this means that in order to add files to a new workflow at compilation/instantiation time, you need to modify the $wft->{tag} array to include iw_file elements (presumably one for each file in the original task). This might be something like:


foreach $file (@files) {
    push (@{$wft->{tag}{'iw_file'}{value}}, $file);
}

I haven't done this myself, the above is pretty much theoretical, but I believe is most consistent with how the WF Perl libs and most WFTs are actually coded. It would appear that the {file} element of the WFtemplate object is a red herring of sorts.

Migrateduser

Well that seems to make a lot of sense. Thinking about it, this solution was staring us in the face this entire time. I'm still unsure why there is a file attribute in the WFtemplate object and what its use is. But this solution is reasonable. Thanks for the well written response.

Dave Smith
Sr. Software Engineer
Nike, Inc.
(503) 671-4238
DavidH.Smith@nike.com