skylerrogers/stateflow

State machine that allows dynamic transitions for business workflows

Stateflow¶ ↑

PLEASE NOTE!!!¶ ↑

*Version 0.5.x > will only support Rails 3 / ActiveModel persistences. If you are using Rails 2 Please make sure you use the 0.4.x releases. There is a branch dedicated to that.*

This is the basics of the gem. Please check out the examples directory or tests for usage until this README gets fleshed out. Feel free to fork and modify as you please.

INSTALL¶ ↑

gem install stateflow

Usage¶ ↑

As you can see below, Stateflow’s API is very similar to AASM, but allows for a more dynamic state transition flow. Stateflow supports persistence/storage with Mongoid, MongoMapper, and ActiveRecord. Request any others or push them to me.

Stateflow defaults to ActiveRecord but you can set the persistence layer with:

Stateflow.persistence = :mongo_mapper

OR

Stateflow.persistence = :active_record

OR

Stateflow.persistence = :mongoid

Stateflow allows dynamic :to transitions with :decide. The result :decide returns needs to be one of the states listed in the :to array, otherwise it wont allow the transition. Please view the advanced example below for usage.

You can set the default column with the state_column function in the stateflow block. The default state column is “state”.

state_column :state

Rails 3¶ ↑

Stateflow now automatically tries to detect your persistence from your applications default ORM config. If the ORM you are using does not have a persistence layer it will default to ActiveRecord.

Basic Example¶ ↑

require 'rubygems'
require 'stateflow'

# No persistence
Stateflow.persistence = :none

class Stoplight
  include Stateflow

  stateflow do
    initial :green

    state :green, :yellow, :red

    event :change_color do
      transitions :from => :green, :to => :yellow
      transitions :from => :yellow, :to => :red
      transitions :from => :red, :to => :green
    end
  end
end

Advanced Example¶ ↑

require 'rubygems'
require 'stateflow'

# No persistence
Stateflow.persistence = :none

class Test
  include Stateflow

  stateflow do

    initial :love

    state :love do
      enter lambda { |t| p "Entering love" }
      exit :exit_love
    end

    state :hate do
      enter lambda { |t| p "Entering hate" }
      exit lambda { |t| p "Exiting hate" }
    end

    state :mixed do
      enter lambda { |t| p "Entering mixed" }
      exit lambda { |t| p "Exiting mixed" }
    end

    event :b do
      transitions :from => :love, :to => :hate, :if => :no_ice_cream
      transitions :from => :hate, :to => :love
    end

    event :a do
      transitions :from => :love, :to => [:hate, :mixed], :decide => :likes_ice_cream?
      transitions :from => [:hate, :mixed], :to => :love
    end
  end

  def likes_ice_cream?
    rand(10) > 5 ? :mixed : :hate
  end

  def exit_love
    p "Exiting love"
  end

  def no_ice_cream
    rand(4) > 2 ? true : false
  end
end

Bang event vs non-bang event¶ ↑

Bang events will save the model after call, where the non bang event will just update the state and call the transitions. (ie. model.change! vs model.change)

Extras¶ ↑

• When transitioning states, the previous state from which you have transitioned to can be accessed via ‘_previous_state`. See tests for more information.

Note on Patches/Pull Requests¶ ↑

• Fork the project.

• Make your feature addition or bug fix.

• Add tests for it. This is important so I don’t break it in a future version unintentionally.

• Commit, do not mess with Rakefile, version, or history. (if you want to have your own version, that is fine but bump version in a commit by itself I can ignore when I pull)

• Send me a pull request. Bonus points for topic branches.

Copyright¶ ↑

Copyright © 2010 Ryan Oberholzer. See LICENSE for details.