Workflow UI Rendering

The UI uses information from the workflow definition to render display and input pages. There are two different kinds of pages, switches and inputs.

Action Switch Page

Used when the workflow comes to a state with more than one possible action.

headline

Concated string from state.label + workflow.label

descriptive intro

String as defined in state.description, can contain HTML tags

workflow context

By default a plain dump of the context using key/values, array/hash values are converted to a html list/dd-list. You can define a custom output table with labels, formatted values and even links, etc - see the section “Workflow Output Formatting” fore details.

button bar / simple layout

One button is created for each available action, the button label is taken from action.label. The value of action.tooltip becomes a mouse-over label.

button bar / advanced layout

If you set the state.hint attribute, each button is drawn on its own row with a help text shown aside.

Form Input Page

Used when the workflow comes to a state where only one action is available or where one action was choosen.

headline

Concated string from action.label (if none is given: state.label ) + workflow.label

descriptive intro

String as defined in action.description, can contain HTML tags

form fields

The field itself is created from label, placeholder and tooltip. If at least one form field has the description attribute set, an explanatory block for the fields is added to the bottom of the page.

Markup of Final States

If the workflow is in a final state, the default is to render a colored status bar on with a message that depends on the name of the state. Recognized names are SUCCESS, CANCELED and FAILURE which generate a green/yellow/red bar with a corresponding error message. The state name NOSTATUS has no status bar at all.

If the state does not match one of those names, a yellow bar saying “The workflow is in final state” is show.

To customize/suppress the status bar you can add level and message to the state definition (see above).