Starting With Flowable As Developer

[paulxtiseo]

Hi,

I downloaded the source code in an attempt to learn how the whole Flowable stack works. Of course, with so many moving parts, I am facing some issues as to where to start. I’m guessing a good point would be the core engine. Is it located at https://github.com/flowable/flowable-engine/tree/master/modules/flowable-engine/src/main/java/org/flowable/engine? If so, which implementation files might form the cornerstone of the engine?

[joram]

The easiest would be to write a simple process or case that you start and then debug what happens behind the scenes.

Important parts to understand how it fundamentally works are

• the agenda en the operations: https://github.com/flowable/flowable-engine/tree/master/modules/flowable-engine/src/main/java/org/flowable/engine/impl/agenda
• the entitymanager (kinda like a service) and data managers who are responsible for data persistence: https://github.com/flowable/flowable-engine/tree/master/modules/flowable-engine/src/main/java/org/flowable/engine/impl/persistence/entity
• the ActivityBehaviors which actually implement the actual logic that happens when executing a certain step: https://github.com/flowable/flowable-engine/tree/master/modules/flowable-engine/src/main/java/org/flowable/engine/impl/bpmn/behavior