STP/BPMN Component/EclipseCon2008

This page features the tutorial Get the most of the BPMN modeler for EclipseCon 2008.

This page is related to Developing with the STP BPMN modeler and Using the STP BPMN modeler.

This is a work in progress, please watch the page to stay tuned. If you want to submit something to this page, please post to this mailing list first.

Here is the outline of the tutorial:

• 16h: Presentation
• 16h15: Modeling BPMN
• 16h45: Interactions with the modeler
• 17h05: Get your own editor
• 17h35: Future plans and conclusions
• 17h50: Questions

What's in the box

An active Eclipse component

• Going 1.0
• Just i18n'ed

BPMN modeling sample

Below is a list of items we want to cover during the BPMN modeling sample

• Palette
• Popup toolbar
• Appearance tab
• Creating basic shapes
  • Different activity types
  • Gateways
• Sequence and messaging edges
  • Connection rules
  • Customized handles
  • Customize the edge and the reset connection button
  • Change the order of edges for an activity
• Insert space tool
• Using artifacts
  • TODO tags
• Validation
  • Using the builder to validate the diagram
• Documentation
  • Attaching a reference to a project file to a shape
  • Opening a file

The annotation coding sample

The bug view

This sample demonstrates how you can integrate the BPMN modeler with an external application. Our coding sample will consist in creating a new plugin, which will transform bugs into text annotations during a drag and drop operation.

In this sample we will use a plugin (org.eclipse.bpmn.sample.bugView) which shows a tree view of various bugs.

Creating the drag and drop plugin

Create the plugin, make it dependent of org.eclipse.stp.bpmn.diagram and org.eclipse.stp.bpmn.sample.bugView.

IDnDHandlers

Open the extensions tab and create a new extension for org.eclipse.core.runtime.adapters:

<extension point="org.eclipse.core.runtime.adapters">
   <factory adaptableType="org.eclipse.stp.bpmn.sample.bugView.bug.view.IBug" 
            class="org.eclipse.stp.bpmn.sample.bugDnD.dnd.BugAdapterFactory">
      <adapter type="org.eclipse.stp.bpmn.dnd.IDnDHandler"/>
   </factory>
</extension>

Then, we create the adapter factory by naming it BugAdapterFactory and placing it in dnd package under the plugin class.

The contents of the adapter factory should like this:

public class BugAdapterFactory implements IAdapterFactory {
 
    public Object getAdapter(Object adaptableObject, Class adapterType) {
        if (adaptableObject instanceof IBug && 
                IDnDHandler.class.equals(adapterType)) {
            return new BugDnDHandler((IBug) adaptableObject);
        }
        return null;
    }
 
    public Class[] getAdapterList() {
        return new Class[] {IDnDHandler.class};
    }
 
}

We create a BugDnDHandler class that will extend AbstractViewDnDHandler.

In its constructor this class takes a IBug object.

You can split the IDnDHandler implementation into two aspects. It implements a menu look and feel on one hand, and returns a command on the other hand.

We determine the number of items to show in the menu, and we provide a label and an image for each of them.

public int getItemCount() {
        return 1;
    }
 
    public Image getMenuItemImage(IGraphicalEditPart hoverPart, int index) {
        if (bug.getState() == IBug.FIXED) {
            return BugView.BUG_FIXED;
        } else {
            return BugView.BUG;
        }
    }
 
    public String getMenuItemLabel(IGraphicalEditPart hoverPart, int index) {
        return "Drop a bug over the diagram";
    }

Now for the interesting bits: the drop command itself.

    public Command getDropCommand(IGraphicalEditPart hoverPart, int index,
            Point dropLocation) {
        BPMNVisual2ProcessGenerator generator = new BPMNVisual2ProcessGenerator();
        TextAnnotation textA = generator.addTextAnnotation(null, bug.getSummary());
        Map<String, String> details = new HashMap<String, String>();
        details.put("state", String.valueOf(bug.getState()));
        details.put("number", String.valueOf(bug.getNumber()));
        generator.addAnnotation(textA, BUG_ANNOTATION_SOURCE, details);
        generator.generateViews();
        View textAnnotationView = generator.getSemantic2notationMap().get(textA);
 
        return getDropViewCommand(Collections.singletonList(textAnnotationView), 
                dropLocation, hoverPart);
    }

In this command, we use a generator to generate semantic elements and their views.

Let's create the generator:

BPMNVisual2ProcessGenerator generator = new BPMNVisual2ProcessGenerator();

Now we use it to create a text annotation that we annotate with an EAnnotation.

TextAnnotation textA = generator.addTextAnnotation(null, bug.getSummary());
Map<String, String> details = new HashMap<String, String>();
details.put("state", String.valueOf(bug.getState()));
details.put("number", String.valueOf(bug.getNumber()));
generator.addAnnotation(textA, BUG_ANNOTATION_SOURCE, details);

We generate the view of the text annnotation:

generator.generateViews();
View textAnnotationView = generator.getSemantic2notationMap().get(textA);

We use a helper method defined in the super class to create the command that will actually drop the view.

return getDropViewCommand(Collections.singletonList(textAnnotationView), 
                dropLocation, hoverPart);