Creating Flows

Introduction

You can create a Conan Flow object, by using the method Conan.flow which takes a UserFlowDef.

In summary a UserFlowDef receives:

• name: The name of the flow.

• statuses: A JS object where each key represents the name of the status, and each value represents the status definition (UserStatusDef). In the status definition we can optionally specify any of these properties:

  • Reactions. An array of callbacks to execute as soon as this status is reached.

  • Transitions: The available functions that can be executed while the Flow is on this status and that will cause the flow to move to a different status (Transitions and is explained below in detail). Note that you always can transition to a different status using the default transition $toStatus.

  • Steps.The available functions that can be executed while the Flow is on this status and that will cause the flow to move to a different state (this is explained below in detail)

Conan.flow({
    name: 'authentication',
    statuses: {
        notAuthenticated: {},
        authenticated: {},
        authenticating: {
            reactions: [
                onAuthenticating => {
                    let valid = DummyAuthenticator.authenticate(onAuthenticating.getData()[1]);
                    const nextStatus = valid ? {
                        name: "authenticated" as any,
                        data: "TOKEN"
                    } : {name: "authenticationFailed"};
                    setTimeout(() => onAuthenticating.do.$toStatus(nextStatus), 2000);
                }
            ],
        },
        authenticationFailed: {
            reactions: [
                onAuthenticationFailed => setTimeout(() => onAuthenticationFailed.do.$toStatus("notAuthenticated"), 2000)
            ],
        }
    },
    initialStatus: {
        name: 'notAuthenticated',
    }
})

You can see this in our Authentication demo

Statuses

Definition

We would recommend reading about the general concepts for Conan Data before deep diving into understanding the statuses for a flow.

The key element for a flow is the statuses that defines it. In the case of the example for the authentication flow, the statuses are:

notAuthenticated, authenticated, authenticating, authenticationFailed

The initial status (the status the flow starts with after it has been created is)

notAuthenticated

Reactions / Steps / Transitions

Each status can also receive:

• Reactions: Logic to execute every time a new state is provided on this status.

• Steps. The available methods to generate new states for this status

• Transitions. The available methods to transition to different status from this status.

To define all the statuses, you need to provide a key value pair to the UserFlowDef.statuses property where each key is the name of the status.

You can also decide to only pass an empty object as the configuration for the status, when you do this, the status will be created with no reactions/steps or transitions.

This is the case in the example for the statuses: notAuthenticated and authenticated.

Initial Status

A flow also has an initial status.

You need to specify two things for the initial status:

• name: [mandatory] It should match the name of one of the defined statuses

• data: [optional] The initial state for that status.

To see how to use Conan Flows after they have been created, check our next section to see how to serialise them into different Conan States.