The low-code for developers with yesterday's deadline
Viewflow is a low-code, reusable component library for creating comprehensive business applications with ease. Built on top of Django, Viewflow simplifies development by providing pre-built components for user management, workflows, and reporting, while still offering flexibility to customize and integrate with existing systems.
With Viewflow, you can create full-featured business applications in just a few lines of code using its reusable component library. It's shipped as a single package with batteries included, and each part of Viewflow can be used independently of the others, but they all work well together.
GPT assisted with Viewflow documentation: Viewflow Pair Programming Buddy
Viewflow comes in two flavors:
- Viewflow Core: A lightweight, open-source library with only non-opinionated core classes that allows you to build your custom solution on top.
- Viewflow PRO: A comprehensive package that includes reference functionality implementation and integrated with third-party Django packages. This package has a commercial-friendly license that allows private forks and modifications of Viewflow.
- Modern, responsive user interface with an SPA-style look and feel
- Reusable workflow library for quick implementation of BPMN workflows
- Built-in customizable CRUD for managing complex forms and data
- Integrated reporting dashboard
- Small and concise API
Viewflow works with Python 3.8 or greater and Django 4.0+
Viewflow:
pip install django-viewflow
Viewflow-PRO:
pip install django-viewflow-pro --extra-index-url https://pypi.viewflow.io/<licence_id>/simple/
Add 'viewflow' and, in case you need workflow capabilities 'viewflow.workflow' to the INSTALLED_APPS settings.py
INSTALLED_APPS = [
....
'viewflow',
'viewflow.workflow',
]
Here's an example of how to create a simple pizza ordering workflow using Viewflow:
- Create a model to store process data
Before creating the workflow, you'll need to define a model to store the process data. Viewflow provides a Process model as the base model for your process instances. You can add your own fields to the model using jsonstore fields to avoid model inheritance and additional joins:
from viewflow import jsonstore
from viewflow.workflow.models import Process
class PizzaOrder(Process):
customer_name = jsonstore.CharField(max_length=250)
address = jsonstore.TextField()
toppings = jsonstore.TextField()
tips_received = jsonstore.IntegerField(default=0)
baking_time = jsonstore.IntegerField(default=10)
class Meta:
proxy = True
- Create a new flow definition file flows.py
Next, create a new flow definition file flows.py and define your workflow. In this example, we'll create a PizzaFlow class that inherits from flow.Flow. We'll define three steps in the workflow: start, bake, and deliver. We'll use CreateProcessView and UpdateProcessView to create and update the process data from PizzaOrder:
from viewflow import this
from viewflow.workflow import flow
from viewflow.workflow.flow.views import CreateProcessView, UpdateProcessView
from .models import PizzaOrder
class PizzaFlow(flow.Flow):
process_class = PizzaOrder
start = flow.Start(
CreateProcessView.as_view(
fields=["customer_name", "address", "toppings"]
)
).Next(this.bake)
bake = flow.View(
UpdateProcessView.as_view(fields=["baking_time"])
).Next(this.deliver)
deliver = flow.View(
UpdateProcessView.as_view(fields=["tips_received"])
).Next(this.end)
end = flow.End()
- Add the flow to your URL configuration:
Finally, add the PizzaFlow to your URL configuration. You can use the Site and FlowAppViewset classes to register your workflow with the pre-built frontend.
from django.urls import path
from viewflow.contrib.auth import AuthViewset
from viewflow.urls import Application, Site
from viewflow.workflow.flow import FlowAppViewset
from my_pizza.flows import PizzaFlow
site = Site(
title="Pizza Flow Demo",
viewsets=[
FlowAppViewset(PizzaFlow, icon="local_pizza"),
]
)
urlpatterns = [
path("accounts/", AuthViewset().urls),
path("", site.urls),
]
- Make and run migrations and access the workflow through the pre-built frontend.
Make and run migrations to create the necessary database tables, then start your Django server and access the workflow through the pre-built frontend. You should be able to create and track pizza orders with the workflow.
Go to the https://docs.viewflow.io/workflow/writing.html for the next steps
Viewflow's documentation for the latest version is available at http://docs.viewflow.io/
Documentarian for Viewflow 1.xx series available at http://v1-docs.viewflow.io
For sample applications and code snippets, check out the Viewflow PRO cookbook at
https://github.com/viewflow/cookbook
Viewflow is an Open Source project licensed under the terms of the AGPL license - The GNU Affero General Public License v3.0 with the Additional Permissions described in LICENSE_EXCEPTION
The AGPL license with Additional Permissions is a free software license that allows commercial use and distribution of the software. It is similar to the GNU GCC Runtime Library license, and it includes additional permissions that make it more friendly for commercial development.
You can read more about AGPL and its compatibility with commercial use at the AGPL FAQ
If you use Linux already, this package license likely won't bring anything new to your stack.
Viewflow PRO has a commercial-friendly license allowing private forks and modifications of Viewflow. You can find the commercial license terms in COMM-LICENSE.
- The 'pattern' widget attribute is now passed to the underlying form input.
- Fixed issue with flow image reload.
- Fixed dashboard max height on pages with long sidebars.
- Added .get_success_url(request) shortcut method to StartViewActivation and ViewActivation for convenient use in function-based views.
- Fixed duplicated task_finished signal on flow.View completion.
- Enabled callable defaults on jsonstore fields.
- Improved SVG and BPMN export shapes for SplitFirst and Timer Tasks.
- Created cookbook demo for common workflow patterns
- Clone data, seed, and artifacts from canceled tasks to revived tasks.
- Enhance error handling for celery.Job.
- Improve the process cancellation template.
- Redirect to the task detail page after canceling or undoing actions, instead of redirecting to the process detail page.
- Added links to parent subprocess and parent task on the subprocess process and task details pages.
- Updated the Process.parent_task field to use related_name='subprocess', allowing access to subprocesses via task.subprocess
- Enhanced CreateProcessView and UpdateProcessView to set process_seed and artifact_generic_foreign_key fields based on form.cleaned_data, as Django model forms do not handle this automatically.
- Added tasks with an ERROR status to the process dashboard for better visibility and tracking.
- Added tooltip hover titles to nodes without text labels in the SVG workflow graph.
- Marked StartHandler nodes as BPMN Start Message events on the SVG graph.
- Fixed rendering of hidden field errors in forms.
- Fixed issue with Split/Join operations when an immediate split to join connection occurs.
- Improved redirect functionality for "Execute and Continue." Now redirects to the process details if the process has finished.
- Enabled the Undo action for End() nodes.
- Introduced new parameters for .If().Then(.., task_data=, task_seed) and .Else(...)
- Include {{ form.media }} into default workflow/task.html template
- Introduced a new parameter for .Next(..., task_seed=) that allows the instantiation of new tasks with additional initialized .seed generic foreign key
- Introduced a new parameter for .Split(..., task_seed_source=) same as task_data_source, prodices outgoing tasks with initializaed .seed value
- Introduced a new parameter for flow.Subprocess(process_data=, process_seed=, task_data=, task_seed=) allows to provide data nad seed for newly created process and/or start task
- Introduced a new parameter for .Next(..., task_data=) that allows the instantiation of new tasks with additional initialized .data, enabling data to be passed from task to task.
- Added process.seed and task.seed generic foreign keys to the default workflow models. Along with process.artifact and task.artifact, these additions enable tracking of business process results from start to finish.
- Renamed Split.Next(data_source=) to task_data_source=.