How to deploy definitions and start process instance?

Flowable Engine
1

We have separate server running modeller WAR twhere we plan to make the definitions that we then deploy to out app that has spring-flowable-rest-starter. It runs and the flowable REST API is working , or so it seems.

Q1: How can I export process process(es) definitions WITH! the attached forms definitions from the modeller (war) UI ? The mysterious “app” UI seems to give excatly what we need all bpmn20-xml files AND all the .forms files used by the processes. Seems nice how do I use this .bar file?

Q2: How can I import the FULL definition of process(es) AND the forms they use ? POT:n the bar file to process-api/deployments *seems to the right way, but it only seem to read bpmn20.xml files from inside the .bar file, completely ignoring all .forms files in there. WT… ? Ok, now the next obvious solution seem to be the form-api/deployments REST endpoint but that does not accept .bar file, only .form or .xml files. There does not seem to be any way to export the Forms from the modeler, except as “app” .bar files. Even trying to manually extract the .form files from the .bar does not succeed it gives CRC error.

Q3: flossing over the forms mystery how are the processes intended to started via the REST API, first of all is process-api context to be used. Documentation seems to point that way.So now how can the client get information about the REQUIRED dataobjects required to start the process instance ???

q4: there seems to be a alternative concept of a “start Form” which seem more of manual user interaction thing but that would work, IF there was a way for client to get even that schema information.
I found a way to get form definition by the processID, that seem to be the undocumented way of getting the “start form” but from form-api id that the right way to get the form filed definitions ?

2

Q1: a bar (business archive) file contain the runtime models, for example the BPMN xml needed to deploy and run this on the Flowable engine in Java. Or it can be deployed via REST.

Q2: The app engine is the overarching engine that will delegate to each engine separately. If you hit the deploy button in the Modeler, this is what happens behind the scenes.

Q3: A form is meant for human interaction, i.e. shown on a screen that can be filled in. Flowable does’t have this for programmatic use cases, which seems what you are asking for, if I understand you correctly?

Q4: Indeed, the start form is meant for human interaction. You could in theory fetch the form model and use that for machine communication, but it’s not built for that.