07 - Workflow Control

When defining your configuration, you also define a set of actions that can be controlled depending on your defined conditions.

In some of the prior examples you would have noticed these being used.

Behaviour & Rules

• Actions by default execute asynchronously.
  • This means if you have multiple actions defined under one interface with no controls they will all execute at the same time.
• Actions can execute sequentially when using the appropriate workflow controls.
  • Actions do not necessarily need to be in the order they execute although it is recommended for a logical approach and that shortcuts can be used.
• The action name should be unique so controls can be used appropriately.
• Actions can be retried on failure.
• Actions should only have one input, this could be defined with input: something or a via defining a particular functional input such as a database query or http request etc.

depends_on

To control your actions to execute sequential, you can use the depends_on workflow control.

depends_on just requires the defined list of actions to complete whether success or failure.

Basic Example

name: Tutorial - depends_on - 1
description: Workflow control

  tutorial/workflow-depends-on:
    output: http
    method: POST

    actions:
      - name: CheckLoginBody
        input: a|body
        assert:
          tests:
            - value: email
              is_not_null: true

      - name: CheckSomeOtherData
        depends_on:
          - CheckLoginBody # wait for this action to finish before continuing
        input: a|body
        assert:
          tests:
            - value: something
              is_not_null: true

Example with previous shortcut

The previous keyword to refer to the previous action for the same behaviour

name: Tutorial - depends_on - 2
description: Workflow control

interfaces:
  tutorial/workflow-depends-on-2:
    output: http
    method: POST

    actions:
      - name: CheckLoginBody
        input: a|body
        assert:
          tests:
            - value: email
              is_not_null: true

      - name: CheckSomeOtherData
        depends_on:
          - previous # we can use the `previous` keyword to refer to the previous action for the same behaviour
        input: a|body
        assert:
          tests:
            - value: something
              is_not_null: true

Depending on multiple actions

In this example the first and second action CheckLoginBody and CheckParams will run asynchronously, however the third action will wait on these two before running.

name: Tutorial - depends_on - 3
description: Workflow control

interfaces:
  tutorial/workflow-depends-on-3:
    output: http
    method: POST

    actions:
      - name: CheckLoginBody
        input: a|body
        assert:
          tests:
            - value: email
              is_not_null: true

     - name: CheckParams
        input: a|params
        assert:
          tests:
            - value: something
              is_not_null: true

      - name: CheckSomeOtherData
        depends_on:
          - CheckLoginBody # we can define a list of actions here to wait on
          - CheckParams
        input: a|body
        assert:
          tests:
            - value: something
              is_not_null: true

run_when_succeeded

Run this action when the list of defined actions under run_when_succeeded has completed successfully.

name: Tutorial - run_when_succeeded - 1
description: Workflow control

interfaces:
  tutorial/workflow-run-when-succeeded-1:
    output: http
    method: POST

    actions:
      - name: CheckLoginBody
        input: a|body
        assert:
          tests:
            - value: email
              is_not_null: true

     - name: CheckParams
        input: a|params
        assert:
          tests:
            - value: something
              is_not_null: true

      - name: RunOnSuccess
        run_when_succeeded:
          - CheckLoginBody # run this action if these have passed
          - CheckParams
        input: a|body
        assert:
          tests:
            - value: something
              is_not_null: true

run_when_failed

Run this action when the list of defined actions under run_when_failed has failed.

name: Tutorial - run_when_failed - 1
description: Workflow control

interfaces:
  tutorial/workflow-run-when-failed-1:
    output: http
    method: POST

    actions:
      - name: CheckLoginBody
        input: a|body
        assert:
          tests:
            - value: email
              is_not_null: true

     - name: CheckParams
        input: a|params
        assert:
          tests:
            - value: something
              is_not_null: true

      - name: RunOnFailure
        run_when_failed:
          - CheckLoginBody # run this action if these two have failed
          - CheckParams
        input: a|body
        assert:
          tests:
            - value: something
              is_not_null: true