swf

Simple Workflow Package (SWF)

This package provides a simple, linear workflow management system in Go. It is designed for human-driven processes where steps require manual intervention, approval, or completion by users.

Overview

The workflow package allows you to create and manage linear, sequential workflows that are typically driven by human interaction. It provides functionality to:

• Create and manage steps in a sequential workflow
• Track the current step and who is responsible for it
• Determine if steps are complete
• Calculate workflow progress
• Store and retrieve metadata for steps
• Serialize and deserialize workflow state
• Visualize the workflow as a DOT graph

Note: This is a simple linear workflow system designed for human-driven processes. It does not support complex workflows with branching paths or DAGs (Directed Acyclic Graphs). Each step follows the previous one in a straightforward sequence and typically requires manual completion.

When to Use This Package

This package is ideal for:

• Document approval workflows
• Employee onboarding processes
• Manual review workflows
• Form completion wizards
• Business process checklists
• Project stage gates
• Any process where human intervention is required at each step

It is not suitable for:

• Automated processing workflows
• Complex workflows with branching paths
• DAG-based workflows
• Parallel processing workflows
• Workflows requiring conditional branching
• Automated task execution

Components

Step

A Step represents a single step in a workflow. Each step has:

• Name: Unique identifier for the step
• Type: Type of the step (default: "normal")
• Title: Display title for the step
• Description: Description of what the step does
• Responsible: Person or role responsible for completing the step

Workflow

A Workflow manages multiple steps and tracks the workflow state. It provides methods to:

• Add steps to the workflow
• Get and set the current step
• Check if a step is current or complete
• Calculate workflow progress
• Store and retrieve metadata for steps
• Serialize and deserialize workflow state
• Visualize the workflow as a DOT graph

Usage

package main

import (
    "fmt"
    "github.com/yourusername/workflow"
)

func main() {
    // Create a new linear workflow
    wf := workflow.NewWorkflow()

    // Create steps in sequence
    step1 := workflow.NewStep("step1")
    step1.Title = "Document Review"
    step1.Description = "Review the submitted document"
    step1.Responsible = "John Doe" // Person responsible for completing this step

    step2 := workflow.NewStep("step2")
    step2.Title = "Manager Approval"
    step2.Description = "Manager approval of the document"
    step2.Responsible = "Jane Smith" // Person responsible for completing this step

    // Add steps to the workflow in sequence
    wf.AddStep(step1)
    wf.AddStep(step2)

    // Steps will be executed in the order they were added
    // Each step requires manual completion by the responsible person
    // Get the current step
    currentStep := wf.GetCurrentStep()
    fmt.Printf("Current step: %s\n", currentStep.Name)

    // Move to the next step
    wf.SetCurrentStep(step2)

    // Check if a step is complete
    isComplete := wf.IsStepComplete(step1)
    fmt.Printf("Is step1 complete? %v\n", isComplete)

    // Get progress
    progress := wf.GetProgress()
    fmt.Printf("Progress: %d/%d steps completed (%.2f%%)\n",
        progress.Completed, progress.Total, progress.Percents)

    // Visualize the workflow
    dotGraph := wf.Visualize()
    fmt.Println("Workflow visualization (DOT format):")
    fmt.Println(dotGraph)
}

Visualization

The package provides a visualization feature that generates a DOT graph representation of the workflow. The visualization:

• Shows steps as boxes with their titles
• Uses colors to indicate status:
  • White: Pending steps
  • Blue (#2196F3): Current step
  • Green (#4CAF50): Completed steps
• Shows edges between steps with:
  • Gray (#9E9E9E): Default edge color
  • Green (#4CAF50): Completed path
• Includes tooltips with step descriptions
• Arranges the graph left-to-right

You can render the DOT graph using:

1. Graphviz's dot command: dot -Tpng workflow.dot -o workflow.png
2. Online tools like Graphviz Online
3. The Graphviz Visual Editor