Generalities
yii2-workflow is a set on objects dedicated to help managing the life-cycle of an ActiveRecord model within a workflow.
It includes :
- a behavior (SimpleWorkflowBehavior)
- a Workflow Source Component (WorkflowFileSource)
- a Validator (WorkflowValidator)
- three event sequence models
- various helpers
- a set of interfaces
yii2-workflow can be configure to fit your requirements and if that's not enough, you can extend all classes so to implement your own features.
Identifiers
The yii2-workflow refers to workflows and statuses using identifiers. The way these identifiers are formatted, depends on the WorkflowSource components used. For instance if you're working with the default source component (the workflowFileSource ), status identifiers will look like this : workflowId/StatusId (read more)
Initial Status
The initial status is the first status assigned to a model, that's the one and only entry point into a workflow. Each workflow must have exactly one initial status.
For example, in a workflow dedicated to manage posts, the initial status could be called 'draft' : it usually describes the first state of the post.
Transition
A transition is a directed link between two statuses : the start status and the end status (the words 'source' and 'target' may also be used).
For example, if we define a transition between the status 'draft' and 'published', a post with status 'draft' (the start status) is able to reach status 'published' (the end status), but not the opposite.
Workflow Source
The Workflow Source is a component responsible for providing workflow, status and transitions objects based on a formatted workflow definition.
A Workflow Source component can ready virtually any kind of source. The first release includes the WorkflowFileSource component : by default this source reads a workflow definition from a PHP array wrapped in a class.
Read more about Workflow Source
Events
The SimpleWorkflow is making use of Yii2 events to allow customization of model behavior. You can attach handlers to these events in order to implement a specific behavior to your model during its life cycle inside the workflow.