Activity

The activity gem brings a light-weight DSL to define business processes, and the runtime logic to run those activities.

A process is a set of arbitrary pieces of logic you define, chained together and put into a meaningful context by an activity. Activity lets you focus on the implementation of steps while Trailblazer takes care of the control flow.

Please find the full documentation on the Trailblazer website. [Note that the docs are WIP.]

Example

The activity gem provides three default patterns to model processes: Path, Railway and FastTrack. Here's an example what a railway activity could look like, along with some more complex connections.

module Memo::Update
  extend Trailblazer::Activity::Railway()
  module_function

  # here goes your business logic
  #
  def find_model(ctx, id:, **)
    ctx[:model] = Memo.find_by(id: id)
  end

  def validate(ctx, params:, **)
    return true if params[:body].is_a?(String) && params[:body].size > 10
    ctx[:errors] = "body not long enough"
    false
  end

  def save(ctx, model:, params:, **)
    model.update_attributes(params)
  end

  def log_error(ctx, params:, **)
    ctx[:log] = "Some idiot wrote #{params.inspect}"
  end

  # here comes the DSL describing the layout of the activity
  #
  step method(:find_model)
  step method(:validate), Output(:failure) => End(:validation_error)
  step method(:save)
  fail method(:log_error)
end

Visually, this would translate to the following circuit.

You can run the activity by invoking its call method.

ctx = { id: 1, params: { body: "Awesome!" } }

signal, (ctx, *) = Update.( [ctx, {}] )

pp ctx #=>
{:id=>1,
 :params=>{:body=>"Awesome!"},
 :model=>#<Memo body=nil>,
 :errors=>"body not long enough"}

pp signal #=> #<struct Trailblazer::Activity::End semantic=:validation_error>

With Activity, modeling business processes turns out to be ridiculously simple: You define what should happen and when, and Trailblazer makes sure that it happens.

Features

• Activities can model any process with arbitrary flow and connections.
• Nesting and compositions are allowed and encouraged.
• Different step interfaces, manual processing of DSL options, etc is all possible.
• Steps can be any kind of callable objects.
• Tracing!

Operation

Trailblazer's Operation internally uses an activity to model the processes.