re-use components with ADF Taskflow

With ADF Taskflow you can make page fragments or pages with navigation and re-use this many times in your own applications. Build ones and implement many times. Oracle is doing this too with the webcenter components. These webcenter taskflows are isolated litte programs with its own page fragements and model. If you want to make your own re-usable taskflows then you have to know some things. In this blog I will explain the things you should know. First you have to create a fusion web application. You can ignore the adfc-config.xml this is an unbounded taskflow. Unbounded taskflow don't have a fixed beginning and ending, so it can't be used for the ADF library jar. You have to create a bounded taskflow. There are three different bounded taskflows. The first is the page fragments option. You can use page fragments to add functionality to your page. For example you make a customer info page fragment and include this on the order page or in your marketing application. The others two bounded taskflows are a bit different. This is the train taskflow ( A train is a wizard to help the user to complete the transaction ) and the other is the normal taskflow with pages and methods like a logon flow or a order entry flow. With these two options you have to leave your page and the taskflow pages are shown and when you are ready then you can return to your page.
First we create a bounded taskflow with page fragments. We open this taskflow and add a view from the taskflow menu. Create a page fragment on this view.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="windows-1252" ?>
<adfc-config xmlns="http://xmlns.oracle.com/adf/controller" version="1.2">
  <task-flow-definition id="page1">
    <default-activity>page1</default-activity>
    <view id="page1">
      <page>/page1.jsff</page>
    </view>
    <use-page-fragments/>
  </task-flow-definition>
</adfc-config>

The next step is to create a bounded taskflow without the option page fragements.
Here we also can create a view but now we create a page and we also create a taskflow return. Between the view and the return we add a flowcase with the name return.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="windows-1252" ?>
<adfc-config xmlns="http://xmlns.oracle.com/adf/controller" version="1.2">
  <task-flow-definition id="page">
    <default-activity>startpage</default-activity>
    <input-parameter-definition>
      <name>param1</name>
      <value>#{pageFlowScope.inputParam1}</value>
      <class>java.lang.String</class>
    </input-parameter-definition>
    <view id="startpage">
      <page>/page.jspx</page>
    </view>
    <task-flow-return id="return">
      <outcome>
        <name>return</name>
      </outcome>
    </task-flow-return>
    <control-flow-rule>
      <from-activity-id>startpage</from-activity-id>
      <control-flow-case>
        <from-outcome>return</from-outcome>
        <to-activity-id>return</to-activity-id>
      </control-flow-case>
    </control-flow-rule>
  </task-flow-definition>
</adfc-config>

Open the jsf page and add a button with an action "return" else we can't go back to original page. To make this more interesting we add an input parameter to this taskflow and display the parameter on the jsf page.
It is very important to give the page, taskflow and the package name unique names else you can get errors that it finds for example two datacontrols in the same package location or it uses the wrong page.
The last step is to create an ADF library jar deployment profile. This deployment profile add all the bounded taskflows to the jar. This jar you can add as library to other fusion web applications. When you do this and you create or open a jsf page then in the component panel your new taskflow are displayed.

Now you see there are two types. Taskflow and Regions, Regions are the taskflows with the page fragments option.
When you drag one of your region taskflows on the jsf page is gives you the option to create a (dynamic) region. You see the page fragment on your page. Jdeveloper adds the following code to the jsf page
<af:region value="#{bindings.page11.regionModel}" id="page11"/>
and this code to the pagedef
<executables>
<taskFlow id="page11"
taskFlowId="/WEB-INF/page1-task-flow-definition.xml#page1"
xmlns="http://xmlns.oracle.com/adf/controller/binding"/>
</executables>
You can also drag your own taskflow to the page. What now happens depends if the jsf page is part of an unbounded taskflow or not. If so then jdeveloper create a button with an action <af:commandButton text="page" action="page1"/> and update the unbounded taskflow. It adds a taskflow call and a control flow case.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="windows-1252" ?>
<adfc-config xmlns="http://xmlns.oracle.com/adf/controller" version="1.2">
  <view id="portal">
    <page>/portal.jspx</page>
  </view>
  <task-flow-call id="page1">
    <task-flow-reference>
      <document>/WEB-INF/page-task-flow-definition.xml</document>
      <id>page</id>
    </task-flow-reference>
    <input-parameter>
      <name>param1</name>
      <value>#{'hello'}</value>
    </input-parameter>
  </task-flow-call>
  <control-flow-rule>
    <from-activity-id>portal</from-activity-id>
    <control-flow-case>
      <from-outcome>page1</from-outcome>
      <to-activity-id>page1</to-activity-id>
    </control-flow-case>
  </control-flow-rule>
</adfc-config>

JDeveloper automatically detects the input parameters.
If you don't use the unbounded taskflow (adfc-config.xml) then jdeveloper create a gobutton with a destination. The value is adf.task-flow?_id=page&_document=/WEB-INF/page-task-flow-definition.xml . If you want to add parameters to this url you have to add param1=hello param1 is the parameter of my taskflow. You can also add a return url by adding _return-url. Here an example of the gobutton. <af:goButton text="page" destination="adf.task-flow?_id=page&amp;_document=/WEB-INF/page-task-flow-definition.xml&amp;param1=hello&amp;_return-url=/webcenter_portal-ViewController-context-root/faces/portal2.jspx"/>
That's all