Process timers

Description

A quickstart project shows use of timer based activities within the process to allow a flexible delays before continuing process execution. There are two types of timers used in this quick start

• intermediate timer event - used as part of the regular process flow to introduce delays
• boundary timer event - used as an option to move process flow through alternative path after expiration time

This example shows

• working with timers (both intermediate and boundary)

• optionally use Job Service that allows to externalize time tracking to separate service and by that offload the runtime service

• Intermediate timer event (timers.bpmn)

• Intermediate timer Diagram Properties (top)

• Intermediate timer Diagram Properties (bottom)

• Intermediate timer Before Timer

• Intermediate timer Timer

• Intermediate timer After Timer

• Boundary timer event (timer-on-task.bpmn)

• Boundary timer Diagram Properties (top)

• Boundary timer Diagram Properties (bottom)

• Boundary timer Before Timer

• Boundary timer User Task (top)

• Boundary timer User Task (bottom)

• Boundary timer Timer

• Boundary timer After Timer

• Cycle timer event (timerCycle.bpmn)

• Cycle timer Diagram Properties (top)

• Cycle timer Diagram Properties (bottom)

• Cycle timer Before Timer

• Cycle timer Timer

• Cycle timer AfterTimer

Timer expression is expected to be given in ISO-8601 format e.g. PT30S - wait 30 seconds before expiring. This needs to be given when starting process instance as delay attribute of type string.

Build and run

Prerequisites

You will need:

• Java 11+ installed
• Environment variable JAVA_HOME set accordingly
• Maven 3.8.6+ installed

Compile and Run in Local Dev Mode

mvn clean compile spring-boot:run

Package and Run using uberjar

mvn clean package

To run the generated native executable, generated in target/, execute

java -jar target/process-timer-springboot.jar

OpenAPI (Swagger) documentation

Specification at swagger.io

You can take a look at the OpenAPI definition - automatically generated and included in this service - to determine all available operations exposed by this service. For easy readability you can visualize the OpenAPI definition file using a UI tool like for example available Swagger UI.

In addition, various clients to interact with this service can be easily generated using this OpenAPI definition.

Submit a request to start new timers process

To make use of this application it is as simple as putting a sending request to http://localhost:8080/timers with following content

{
    "delay" : "PT30S"
}

Complete curl command can be found below:

curl -X POST -H 'Content-Type:application/json' -H 'Accept:application/json' -d '{"delay" : "PT30S"}' http://localhost:8080/timers

Show active timer instances

curl -H 'Content-Type:application/json' -H 'Accept:application/json' http://localhost:8080/timers

Cancel boundary timer instance

curl -X DELETE 'http://localhost:8080/timers/{uuid}'

where {uuid} is the id of the given timer instance

Submit a request to start new timers cycle process

To make use of this application it is as simple as putting a sending request to http://localhost:8080/timerscycle with following content

{
    "delay" : "R2/PT1S"
}

Complete curl command can be found below:

curl -X POST -H 'Content-Type:application/json' -H 'Accept:application/json' -d '{"delay" : "R2/PT1S"}' http://localhost:8080/timerscycle

Show active timer instances

curl -H 'Content-Type:application/json' -H 'Accept:application/json' http://localhost:8080/timerscycle

Cancel timer cycle instance

curl -X DELETE 'http://localhost:8080/timerscycle/{uuid}'

where {uuid} is the id of the given timer cycle instance

Submit a request to start new boundary timers process

To make use of this application it is as simple as putting a sending request to http://localhost:8080/timersOnTask with following content

{
    "delay" : "PT30S"
}

Complete curl command can be found below:

curl -X POST -H 'Content-Type:application/json' -H 'Accept:application/json' -d '{"delay" : "PT30S"}' http://localhost:8080/timersOnTask

Show active boundary timer instances

curl -H 'Content-Type:application/json' -H 'Accept:application/json' http://localhost:8080/timersOnTask

Cancel boundary timer instance

curl -X DELETE 'http://localhost:8080/timersOnTask/{uuid}'

where {uuid} is the id of the given timer instance

After executing the above commands you should see a log similar to

• Springboot Log

Before timer... waiting for  PT30S
After Timer
Before timer, waiting for task to be complete or expires in PT30S
After Timer
Before timer... waiting for  R2/PT1S
After Timer
After Timer

Use Kogito Job Service as external timer service

There is additional configuration needed in the application.properties file.

Configure application.properties

To allow to use Job Service as timer service there is a need to specify additional properties

kogito.jobs-service.url=http://localhost:8085
kogito.service.url=http://localhost:8080

First one is used to direct the Kogito runtime to let it know where is the Kogito Job Service - it needs to match the location of the Kogito Job Service when starting it - see below. Second one is used by Kogito Job Service to callback when the timer expires and needs to be pointing to the service host and port

java -Dquarkus.http.port=8085 -jar jobs-service-infinispan/target/jobs-service-infinispan-{version}-runner.jar

• After Starting Infinispan you should see a similar Log as follows

If you'd like to use PostgresSQL or MongoDB as persistence, start the PostgreSQL or MongoDB server, then start job service with following command

For PostgreSQL:

java -Dquarkus.http.port=8085 -Dquarkus.datasource.username={username} -Dquarkus.datasource.password={password} -Dquarkus.datasource.reactive.url=postgresql://{host}:{port}/{db} -Dquarkus.datasource.jdbc.url=jdbc:postgresql://{host}:{port}/{db}  -jar jobs-service-postgresql/target/jobs-service-postgresql-{version}-runner.jar

For MongoDB:

java -Dquarkus.http.port=8085 -Dquarkus.mongodb.connection-string=mongodb://{username}:{password}@{host}:{port} -Dquarkus.mongodb.database={db} -jar jobs-service-mongodb/target/jobs-service-mongodb-{version}-runner.jar

In all cases replace {version} with actual Kogito version to be used (Job Service is available from 0.6.0)

After that you can redo the timer queries described above.

Test your application

Generated application comes with sample test process that allows you to verify if the application is working as expected. Simply execute following command to try it out

curl -X POST -H 'Content-Type: application/json' -i 'http://example-route-on-openshift/timer'

Once successfully invoked you should see “Before timer” and “After timer” in the console of the running application.