Jul 02
Default MySQL admin user: root
Defalut admin password: blank
Jun 30
I’m going to be at Salamanca next 3 days.
My boss mislead me to teach a course about Moodle development, so tomorrow evening I’m getting a train to Madrid. I’ll be out few days but I’ll upload all stuff (slides, code, etc) to this blog ASAP. My speech is on Wednesday, today is Monday, I haven’t started preparing it, poker game tonight, mmmm…. yes, ASAP. 
I’m going to explain most relevant Moodle libreries, such weblib.php or dmllib.php, modules architechture, XMLDB and capabilities. I’m going to use newmodule to make an introduction and our Social Bookmarking activity as a case of study. I supose I’m going to replace some lines of code by TODOS and ask to the public to fill the gaps.
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May 14
I have a problem: I don’t have enough mp3’s in my laptop. I use to listen music while I’m programing and I’m getting bored of them. So during last 3 or 4 months I’ve been listening music from youtube or last.fm.
Less than a month was enough to me to realize that I was losing too much time every day choosing next song so I tried something longer, I listening conferences and speeches.
Last week I made a post about git which contains a video that I re-watched after some months (Julipedia’s recommendation)
This time I dedicate this post to David and Ferran (DFWiki creators) who are designing and developing the new Moodle API and Webservices.
Here is a YouTube video from a Google TechTalk about designing APIs. Joshua Bloch is the speaker, the Principal Engineer at Google. He also led the design of numerous Java platform features as Java Collections Framework, java.math package and the assert mechanism. This guy knows about what is talking about…..
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Apr 04
After deploying a new process I sure that you would like to run it
It’s easy. First of all, you must create a new process instance:
jbpmContext = jbpmConfiguration.createJbpmContext();
processInstance = jbpmContext.newProcessInstance("processname");
Then you can initialize it by adding some variables to the process:
contextInstance = processInstance.getContextInstance();
contextInstance.setVariable("var", myVar);
To start it you have to send a signal to the process first token :
processInstance.getRootToken().signal();
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Mar 17
Deploy a process via java program not using Eclipse interface is very easy. You only need to write this lines.
JbpmContext jbpmContext = jbpmConfiguration.createJbpmContext();
ProcessDefinition processDefinition = ProcessDefinition.parseXmlResource("org/xxx/definitions/yyy/processdefinition.xml");
jbpmContext.deployProcessDefinition(processDefinition);
jbpmContext.close();
It is very useful when you have to write a setup program for your application.
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Mar 14
jBPM task nodes are designed to interact with users. The main utility of this kind of nodes is to treat forms data. When a process arrives to a task node, it waits until the required actor makes an action.
Task nodes are the most complex nodes, you will have to implement two handlers: one to assign the task to an actor and another to define this task.
Lets start with the AssignmentHandler.
Using Eclipse interface you can setup your task node as it follows, specifying where is your class.
ExampleAssign must be something like that:
public class ExampleAssign implements AssignmentHandler{....}
Implementing this interface means that you will have to develop an assign method.
public void assign(Assignable assignable, ExecutionContext executionContext) throws Exception;
Inside this function you will need to assign the current task(assignable) to somebody using assignable.setActorId(actor).
The responsibility of this method does not finish here. When you came into a task node, you will have to save all process state and variables to stop the process. You can not assume that the actor will be waiting for the assignment and neither you will want to wait until he logins into the application. System must continue running normally.
Calling this two functions you will save the execution context into database using Hibernate.
executionContext.getJbpmContext().save(executionContext.getTaskInstance());executionContext.getJbpmContext().close();
Next step is to configure and develop a task controller.
This class must look like this:
public class ControlExample implements TaskControllerHandler{...}
It must implement this two methods:
public void initializeTaskVariables(TaskInstance taskInstance, ContextInstance contextInstance, Token token);public void submitTaskVariables(TaskInstance taskInstance, ContextInstance contextInstance, Token token);
First one is used to initialize task variables, you can set default values or whatever you need.
Second one treat all task variables. This is the main function of the task nodes. Remember to invoke token.signal(); when all treatment is done.
Thats all, but you will be wondering how does it work, how can I wake up the sleeping process…
Somewhere in your program, in a from treatment function or in a button event, for example, you will have to make some extra work. You will need to identify the user and the process instance. Functions like:
List l = jbpmContext.getTaskMgmtSession().findTaskInstances(user);
will help you. When you have the correct TaskInstance you will have to invoke ti.end();. This function will wake up the process and the associated state from database using Hibernate and call submitTaskVariables(). Workflow will continue normally at this point.
Thats all I wanted to explain of jBPM nodes. I’m not normally using Fork and Join nodes in my projects, so I will not write a guide for them. They are very easy to include in your workflows but if somebody ask for it, I will write a mini how-to.
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Feb 15
jBPM mail nodes are simple nodes designed only to send mails. This time you don’t have to implement any handler or function, jBPM libraries provide nearly all you need.
In mail info tab you can set the destination e-mail address, the subject and the mail body that is going to send. This will be useful when you know destination e-mail address, orders@mycompany.com, for instance.
If you need to send mails to workflow actors, you can set a user variable in context:
executionContext.setVariable("user", workflowActor);
and configure mail info as it follows:
jBPM address resolver will check for user e-mail address from database and send him the mail, you will have to do nothing!
This is a great node but I had some requirements that it didn’t provide to me, so I re-implemented it, adding some new methods.
You can download new implementation here.
Now I can send mails using a gmail account. To explain it in a simple way, my implementation read some extra parameters from jbpm.cfg.xml file before sending the mail.
<string name="jbpm.mail.smtp.host" value="smtp.gmail.com" /> <bean name="jbpm.mail.address.resolver" class="org.jbpm.identity.mail.IdentityAddressResolver" singleton="true" /> <string name="jbpm.mail.from.address" value="yourMail@gmail.com" /> <string name="jbpm.mail.user" value="yourUser@gmail.com" /> <string name="jbpm.mail.pass" value="yourPassword" /> <string name="jbpm.mail.port" value="465" /> <string name="jbpm.mail.smtp.socketFactory.port" value="465" /> <string name="jbpm.mail.smtp.socketFactory.class" value="javax.net.ssl.SSLSocketFactory" /> <string name="jbpm.mail.smtp.auth" value="true" /> <string name="jbpm.mail.smtp.starttls.enable" value="true" /> <string name="jbpm.mail.debug" value="true" /> <string name="jbpm.mail.smtp.socketFactory.fallback" value="false" /> <string name="jbpm.mail.advanced.config" value="true" /> <string name='mail.class.name' value='FastSign.mail.Mail' />
If jbpm.mail.advanced.config is set to false it works as the original mail node. Setting it to true, activates the extra parameters. In this case, 465 is gmail port, I suppose you can change it to use other system. Note that you have to define mail.class.name with the correct package.
I hope this will be useful.
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Feb 14
jBPM decision nodes are very useful to create some alternative path along the workflow. The implementation of this node will choose the correct way.
To program these kind of nodes I prefer to develop a DecisionHandler rather than using an expression.
public class Validacion implements DecisionHandler{....}
Implement a decide method is mandatory:
public String decide(ExecutionContext executionContext) throws Exception;
Among this function code lines you can query database, consult session or recover variables from execution context:
executionContext.getVariable("previouslySetVariable");
This function must return a String containing the name of the transition to choose.
As the other nodes, you must configure the handler class with the node using Eclipse interface.
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Feb 14
jBPM simple nodes are the most common nodes in all processes. They are used to encapsulate an action of your workflow.
The easiest way to program these kind of nodes is to develop an ActionHandler . You must do something like this:
public class Example implements ActionHandler{.......}
Developing ActionHandler interfaces involves to implement an execute method:
public void execute(ExecutionContext executionContext) throws Exception;
Inside this function you can add all code you need to perform the desired action. Remember that you have to send a signal to navigate to the next node at the end of execution.
executionContext.getProcessInstance().signal();
Finally, using Eclipse interface you have to link you node with you handler.
At Action menu you must check Configure Action (your node must be selected). Inside Details tab you will be able to select and configure your class.
As easy as you read.
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Feb 11
Moodle provides to developers an extensible user authentication library. You only need to extend auth_plugin_base class and place your code in a new directory inside /auth/. You can find this class inside /lib/authlib.php
This interface defines all functions you will need to develop a new authentication plug-in.
function user_login($username, $password);
This is the primary function used to login users into Moodle. You can do what you need in this function to finally return a boolean indicating the matching or mismatching of the given username and password.
funtion change_password_url();
This function must return the url where users can change the password. can_change_password() function must return true to call this one.
funtion is_internal();
Returns true if Moodle database stores user profile. For instance, LDAP plugin returns false.
function user_exists();
This function is used to check if user exists in external database.
function get_userinfo($username);
Returns an array containing all user information available.
function config_form($config, $err, $user_fields);
This function prints a form for configuring your authentication plug-in. validate_form() and process_config() functions will validate and store into database the introduced parameters.
There are other interesting functions but I have no time to explain all of them.
This interface also defines some hooks to specific Moodle pages.
Function loginpage_hook() allows to make some extra work before Moodle’s login page being printed. You can use it, for instance, to skip login form. You can check for another session in another platform to avoid users login twice.
I hope these lines will help you.
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