Rest Uris with swf

[ezequielf]

Hello, I have two questions regarding rest urls for flow.

First I look up for uri templates and didn't find a (easy) way to do it.
Then I thought of using query parameters instead of a uri template but they seem to get lost when flows start, eventhough I can read them on flow start I would like them to be present on the redirected url.

So the questions are:

1) Is it possible to use a uri template for web flow urls, such as order/1/edit? (As I said, I searched a little and I think it is not)

2) Is correct for the DefaultFlowUrlHandler to not use the query parameters on redirecting when new flows are started (createFlowExecutionUrl(...) implementation),
such as in .../order?edit=1 being redirected to order?execution=eXsY. I know the execution param is needed, but should the original parameters be removed?

Thank in advance.

[Paul Wilson]

Hi there,

Just wondering why you would want RESTful URLs for your flowExecutionURLs? It doesn't seem a good fit to me...

Paul

[ezequielf]

Maybe it's not a good fit as you say.

For example,
I would like to have a url for listing books (html) such as .../book/list;
and from there I would like to be able to edit a particular book (html) in a url such as /book/{id}/edit or .../book?edit_id={id}.
And in the server maybe I would have some controller to POST the edited data of the html pages.
From the flow perpective, that would require to lunch a subflow in a transition to navigate to the edition page passing the correct identifier of the book. From what I have read, it seems that you can't have the parameters passed in the url of the flow as I intend.

In conclusion, as you say Paul, it seems that the server-centric state saving of web flow and the REST-style URLs don't seem to fit together, at least for the current version of web flow.
Thanks for the answer!!

[presence]

Hi!
May be you can use Flow Handlers for this.

import org.springframework.webflow.core.collection.LocalAttributeMap;
import org.springframework.webflow.core.collection.MutableAttributeMap;
import org.springframework.webflow.mvc.servlet.AbstractFlowHandler;

public class UpdateProductFlowHandler extends AbstractFlowHandler {

	@Override
	public String getFlowId() {
		/*
		 * Returns the id of the flow handled by this handler.
		 */
		return "updateProduct";
	}

	@Override
	public MutableAttributeMap createExecutionInputMap(HttpServletRequest request) {
		LocalAttributeMap attributeMap = new LocalAttributeMap();
		/*
		 * Parse request attributes here and add them to attributeMap.
		 */
		return attributeMap;
	}
	
}

and in springDispatcher-servlet.xml:

<bean name="updateProduct" class="your.package.UpdateProductFlowHandler" />

<bean class="org.springframework.web.servlet.handler.SimpleUrlHandlerMapping">
	<property name="mappings">
		<map>
			<entry key="/product/*/edit.do" value-ref="updateProduct" />
		</map>
	</property>
</bean>

[ezequielf]

Yes that looks like it could work, but I think when starting the flow, a redirect will be send to the browser, and the url will change
from .../producto/4/edit.do
to .../updateProduct.
But I didn't tried really, I will see if I can make some time to investigate that solution.
For now the resolution we are taking on this matter is: not use those types of urls and instead use simple urls such as .../product/list (to list all products and make searches) and .../product to edit, view or create new products.

Thanks for the data, will try it latter.
Great community support!!!