OK, so essentially, I am building a custom process/task management application where you can deploy, start processes and complete tasks.
I have a couple of questions, though:
I am actually a little bit confused about the “purpose” of the UI applications. Are they meant as example apps to show what can be done, or are they meant to be used as production-ready systems? Stated in another way: are we meant to use their code in our own projects - and is that even advisable? Do people normally build their own back/front ends for flowable or mostly use the provided apps?
If one wanted to use parts of the UI in a custom application would that be advisable? For example, I am looking at using the form rendering capabilities of the task UI app. Does this make sense? And if so, what is the correct approach - copying over the js/html or including some external library?
The Flowable Modeler application is meant to provide the model editing capabilities we provide for the Flowable Engines, for BPMN, CMMN, DMN and Forms. We consider it stable and it can be used for most use cases. The Flowable IDM, Task and Admin applications are provided as example applications that make it easy to try out Flowable and also might be useful for some use cases. However we don’t consider these applications production-ready applications.
Using for example the form rendering in a custom application could make sense if you are also using Angular and if it covers most of your form use cases.
In you experience, do most people then create custom applications? I am basically trying to ascertain if I am on a somewhat unusual path by not simply using the provided apps.
When you say “covers most of your form use cases” what do you mean? The task app form generation should cover all the applicable forms use cases shouldn’t it? Or are you thinking of if I have specified custom form elements?
From what we saw in other projects, most people create a custom application instead of using the Flowable Task application. The Flowable Modeler and Admin application are used quite a bit as-is to our experience.
Yes, I mean if you need custom form elements are need specific validation logic or something like that. The form rendering code we have in the Flowable Task application is not so complex, so you can also use that code as a reference.
In addition Edorasware is also providing more advanced form support with a richer form editor and renderer. But that’s not open source and has a commercial license.
By the way, from a license perspective, how does one relate to simply taking snippets here and there from the UI code - is that just acceptable if one generally does what is required for the given license?
@tijs, its 18 months since this reply. I wanted to know if anything of this answer has changed or does it still stand that we use flowable modeler as is but use the other apps only as a reference?
