Step 19: Making Decisions with a Workflow

5.0 version

Maintained

Making Decisions with a Workflow
- Describing Workflows
- Using a Workflow

Making Decisions with a Workflow¶

Having a state for a model is quite common. The comment state is only determined by the spam checker. What if we add more decision factors?

We might want to let the website admin moderate all comments after the spam checker. The process would be something along the lines of:

Start with a submitted state when a comment is submitted by a user;
Let the spam checker analyze the comment and switch the state to either potential_spam, ham, or rejected;
If not rejected, wait for the website admin to decide if the comment is good enough by switching the state to published or rejected.

Implementing this logic is not too complex, but you can imagine that adding more rules would greatly increase the complexity. Instead of coding the logic ourselves, we can use the Symfony Workflow Component:

1	$ symfony composer req workflow

Describing Workflows¶

The comment workflow can be described in the config/packages/workflow.yaml file:

config/packages/workflow.yaml¶

framework:
    workflows:
        comment:
            type: state_machine
            audit_trail:
                enabled: "%kernel.debug%"
            marking_store:
                type: 'method'
                property: 'state'
            supports:
                - App\Entity\Comment
            initial_marking: submitted
            places:
                - submitted
                - ham
                - potential_spam
                - spam
                - rejected
                - published
            transitions:
                accept:
                    from: submitted
                    to:   ham
                might_be_spam:
                    from: submitted
                    to:   potential_spam
                reject_spam:
                    from: submitted
                    to:   spam
                publish:
                    from: potential_spam
                    to:   published
                reject:
                    from: potential_spam
                    to:   rejected
                publish_ham:
                    from: ham
                    to:   published
                reject_ham:
                    from: ham
                    to:   rejected

To validate the workflow, generate a visual representation:

1	$ symfony console workflow:dump comment \| dot -Tpng -o workflow.png

Note

The dot command is a part of the Graphviz utility.

Using a Workflow¶

Replace the current logic in the message handler with the workflow:

patch_file¶

--- a/src/MessageHandler/CommentMessageHandler.php
+++ b/src/MessageHandler/CommentMessageHandler.php
@@ -6,19 +6,28 @@ use App\Message\CommentMessage;
 use App\Repository\CommentRepository;
 use App\SpamChecker;
 use Doctrine\ORM\EntityManagerInterface;
+use Psr\Log\LoggerInterface;
 use Symfony\Component\Messenger\Handler\MessageHandlerInterface;
+use Symfony\Component\Messenger\MessageBusInterface;
+use Symfony\Component\Workflow\WorkflowInterface;

 class CommentMessageHandler implements MessageHandlerInterface
 {
     private $spamChecker;
     private $entityManager;
     private $commentRepository;
+    private $bus;
+    private $workflow;
+    private $logger;

-    public function __construct(EntityManagerInterface $entityManager, SpamChecker $spamChecker, CommentRepository $commentRepository)
+    public function __construct(EntityManagerInterface $entityManager, SpamChecker $spamChecker, CommentRepository $commentRepository, MessageBusInterface $bus, WorkflowInterface $commentStateMachine, LoggerInterface $logger = null)
     {
         $this->entityManager = $entityManager;
         $this->spamChecker = $spamChecker;
         $this->commentRepository = $commentRepository;
+        $this->bus = $bus;
+        $this->workflow = $commentStateMachine;
+        $this->logger = $logger;
     }

     public function __invoke(CommentMessage $message)
@@ -28,12 +37,21 @@ class CommentMessageHandler implements MessageHandlerInterface
             return;
         }

-        if (2 === $this->spamChecker->getSpamScore($comment, $message->getContext())) {
-            $comment->setState('spam');
-        } else {
-            $comment->setState('published');
-        }

-        $this->entityManager->flush();
+        if ($this->workflow->can($comment, 'accept')) {
+            $score = $this->spamChecker->getSpamScore($comment, $message->getContext());
+            $transition = 'accept';
+            if (2 === $score) {
+                $transition = 'reject_spam';
+            } elseif (1 === $score) {
+                $transition = 'might_be_spam';
+            }
+            $this->workflow->apply($comment, $transition);
+            $this->entityManager->flush();
+
+            $this->bus->dispatch($message);
+        } elseif ($this->logger) {
+            $this->logger->debug('Dropping comment message', ['comment' => $comment->getId(), 'state' => $comment->getState()]);
+        }
     }
 }

The new logic reads as follows:

If the accept transition is available for the comment in the message, check for spam;
Depending on the outcome, choose the right transition to apply;
Call apply() to update the Comment via a call to the setState() method;
Call flush() to commit the changes to the database;
Re-dispatch the message to allow the workflow to transition again.

As we haven’t implemented the admin validation, the next time the message is consumed, the “Dropping comment message” will be logged.

Let’s implement an auto-validation until the next chapter:

patch_file¶

--- a/src/MessageHandler/CommentMessageHandler.php
+++ b/src/MessageHandler/CommentMessageHandler.php
@@ -50,6 +50,9 @@ class CommentMessageHandler implements MessageHandlerInterface
             $this->entityManager->flush();

             $this->bus->dispatch($message);
+        } elseif ($this->workflow->can($comment, 'publish') || $this->workflow->can($comment, 'publish_ham')) {
+            $this->workflow->apply($comment, $this->workflow->can($comment, 'publish') ? 'publish' : 'publish_ham');
+            $this->entityManager->flush();
         } elseif ($this->logger) {
             $this->logger->debug('Dropping comment message', ['comment' => $comment->getId(), 'state' => $comment->getState()]);
         }

Run symfony server:log and add a comment in the frontend to see all transitions happening one after the other.

This work, including the code samples, is licensed under a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.