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Mehmet Salgar
Mehmet Salgar

Reputation: 39

Spring-Statemachine configuration

I am not sure this is the correct place to ask this question but I could not see a forum link in spring-statemachine project(http://projects.spring.io/spring-statemachine/) to ask a question to the developers, I hope this is the correct way to do it.

For a while I wrote a blog,

Extremely Axajified Web Application

concerning about extremely asynchronous web applications, using Spring Webflow with those and the limitations of Spring Webflow for these sort of projects.

In my proposed solution, I used extensively state machine principles. At the timeframe that I wrote this blog there wasn't an out of the box State Machine that I can use, so I implemented my own version of it.

Now to my surprise, I just saw Spring Statemachine project and I considering to convert my sample application to use the Spring Statemachine framework.

I have two questions to ask before really starting investing effort to the subject. I checked the samples of the Spring Statemachine, it seems that the configuration of the State Machine is done via Java Code.

Is this only possible method, in my sample application, I am reading an UML Model (XMI) and create via Eclipse M2T a Spring configuration file to startup the application.

I find it is for practical uses to complex for the end user to configure a complex State Machine via Java code. For this purpose I used graphical user interfaces to create UML model of the State Machine and convert this to Spring application context, so it will be easier to understand for the end user.

Which you can see here.

UML Model (unfortunately Stack Overflow is not letting me post extra link so please use "#sm_model" at the end of the previous link)

Eclipse M2T UML Model conversion (see above "#m2t")

So is it possible to provide an XML file and configure Spring Statemachine with it? I can naturally create Java classes via M2T but I have a feeling end result will be nearly unreadable for end user for complex projects.

Second question I like to ask, can Spring Statemachine support "Nested Statemachines", I found in the project web site a hint about the possibility but in the existing sample project I could not find a concrete implementation.

Biggest hurdle for the usage of a State Machine in a practical web application is the "State Explosion" and best way to deal with it, is the "Nested Statemachines".

Does Spring Statemachine support this concept.

You can find more details about what I mean with "State Explosion" and "Nested StateMachines" in the following links.

State Explosion (see above "#stateexplosion")

Nested Statemachines (see above "#nested_sm")

I hope this was the correct place to ask these questions.

Thx for the answers

Upvotes: 1

Views: 2085

Answers (1)

Janne Valkealahti
Janne Valkealahti

Reputation: 2646

Sorry for late answer, I just noticed this tagged question.

  1. We don't yet have any functionality to define machine config outside of annotation based config model(javaconfig). Xml config is in our roadmap and you can track its status in ticket https://github.com/spring-projects/spring-statemachine/issues/78.
  2. For your second question, yes we support nested states and even orthogonal regions. Showcase example shows relatively complex scenarios how nested states and transitions between those can be used http://docs.spring.io/spring-statemachine/docs/1.0.0.RC1/reference/htmlsingle/#statemachine-examples-showcase.

Upvotes: 2

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