Overview

If you are building a completely new system composed of many discrete API applications, each of them with a clearly defined area of responsibility, or if you are trying to assemble a collaboration channel between a heterogeneous set of unrelated API applications, you need a means to orchestrate interactions between these applications. A workflow is effectively an orchestration. It gives you a way to decompose a complex series of operations down to a sequence of discrete tasks within a state machine. The sequence of tasks is more complex than just a series. Tasks can fail, and so you need to deal with timeouts, retries, "stuck" flows, and so forth. One way to define a workflow and its tasks is using an arbitrarily-complex language. Or you can keep it simple by making some assumptions: Code is the definition language.

Tasks are independent. Can be used into different workflows.

The only way to communicate between tasks is the workflow. Tasks can add, remove or modify properties of the workflow.

If a task requires a specific property of the workflow to be present, the task can fail, or re-schedule itself within the workflow, or ... The system must be designed with failures in mind. Tasks can fail and, as a consequence, workflows may fail. You may want to recover from a task failure, or from a whole workflow failure. node-workflow This package provides a way to define re-usable workflows using JSON and run concrete jobs with specific targets and parameters based on such workflows .

Terminology

Task: A single discrete operation, such as Send Email.

Workflow: An abstract definition of a sequence of Tasks, including transition conditions and branches.

Job: The execution of a workflow. It is an instance of a Workflow, containing all the required information to execute itself.

System components

A workflow and task factory for creating tasks, workflows and queueing jobs. Uses node.js.

for creating tasks, workflows and queueing jobs. Uses node.js. Alongside the factory , the Workflow API allows the creation of tasks, workflows and jobs through a REST API, with JSON as the payload.

, the allows the creation of tasks, workflows and jobs through a REST API, with JSON as the payload. A Status API , used to check the status of a given job, get information about failures, and so forth.

, used to check the status of a given job, get information about failures, and so forth. Job runners. These are what actually execute workflows. You can have as many runners as you want, and they can live anywhere on the network. Once a runner atomically takes a job, that job is flagged with the runner's unique identifier - locked - to prevent any other runner from executing it. One runner can be composed of multiple associated processes for executing jobs.

The factory talks to a persistence layer, and saves workflows and tasks. Once a Job is created, it's saved with all the information required for its execution, including the associated tasks' code at the moment of job creation. This will avoid any potential problems resulting from the modification of task code once a Job has already been queued.

A runner itself may unintentionally go nuts or crash while a job is being executed, leaving the job with an inappropriated "running" status. When a runner (re)starts, there shouldn't be any job flagged with that runner's unique identifier, nor should it have a running status. If that happens, the first thing a runner must do upon restart is pick any job with such an invalid state and cancel it.

Task properties

Name.

Code to be executed.

Timeout.

Number of retries.

A fall-back task to be executed if the task fails. { name: 'A Task', timeout: 30, retry: 2, body: function(job, cb) { if (!job.foo) { job.foo = true; return cb('Foo was not defined'); } return cb(null); }, fallback: function (err, job, cb) { job.the_err = err; return cb(null); } }

Note that a task's timeout shouldn't be bigger than the workflow timeout, but it really doesn't matter. If a task's execution exceeds the workflow timeout, it will be failed with a 'workflow timeout' error.

Workflow properties

- Name. - A 'chain' of tasks to be executed. - A global timeout. - An alternate error branch.

factory.workflow({ name: 'Sample Workflow', chain: [aTask, anotherTask, aTaskWhichWillFail], timeout: 300, onError: [aFallbackTask] }, function(err, workflow) { if (err) { throw(err); } return workflow; });

Workflow chain and onerror MD5

Starting with version 0.9.4 , MD5 hashes are calculated for the stringified version of both the workflow chain and the workflow onerror members (when present):

wf.chain_md5 = crypto.createHash('md5').update( JSON.stringify(clone(wf.chain))).digest('hex'); wf.onerror_md5 = crypto.createHash('md5').update( JSON.stringify(clone(wf.onerror))).digest('hex');

Both properties can compared against the version of that code stored in the backend to detect if any modifications must be performed.

Note these chain_md5 and onerror_md5 properties are not propagated into jobs created from the workflow.

onCancel optional chain

Since version 0.9.9 it's also possible to add an optional oncancel chain of tasks, which will be run in the case a job is canceled. This chain should be used just to recover from a possible bad state caused when a given job is aborted in the middle of its execution.

This oncancel property has the same format than chain and onerror , and will also have an associated oncancel_md5 hash for quick content verifycation.

Additionally, the results of the execution of this branch of tasks will be saved into the jobs' oncancel_results property.

Job properties

While a Workflow is something abstract, a Job can operate on a concrete target. For example, you can use a REST URI as the target of the job, or an LDAP DN, or whatever you need to make sure that the same job will not be queued twice.

When jobs are created and queued, they check if another job with the same target (and the same parameters) exists. If so, the job creation will fail.

Obviously, there are some cases where you may want the same job to be queued for the same target; for example, POST to a given URI to create a new collection element. For that reason, a job's parameters are also checked with the job's target when creating a new job.

If a job has failed for a given target and parameters, you may want to create a new job after some time. This is possible since the uniqueness checks are only made against previous jobs which are "running" "waiting" or "queued", not versus "finished" jobs (regardless of their result).

Same as the workflow, plus:

Results for each one of the tasks.

The job target, when given.

The job parameters, when necessary.

The job status (something like "queued", "running", "retried", "finished", "waiting"). Note that a job is running while a task is being executed. It's possible to change job status to "queued" once a task has been completed, and leave the job there to be picked by a runner at some later moment.

When to run the job. Maybe we want to delay execution in time?.

Any additional properties a task may want to save with the job, to be used by a subsequent task.

Locks. Optional. A special property containing a string which will be used to build a Regular Expression. See below. factory.job({ workflow: aWorkflow, exec_after: '2012-01-03T12:54:05.788Z' }, function(err, job) { if (err) { callback(err); } aJob = job; callback(null, job); });

Locking other jobs using job.lock property

(Since 0.9.3)

There are some situations where it's not enough to lock jobs solely having the same parameters and target. For whatever reason, you want to lock the creation of any job with arbitrary targets. E.g. if you're using a job to backup some data, you probably don't want anything else modifying or removing that information.

In these cases, we can provide the job.lock property with our job, and set that value to a string which will be used later to build a regular expression.

For example, let's say we want to prevent the creation of any jobs with a target of "modify" or "destroy" until our current job has been finished. We can provide our "backup" job the following property:

locks: '(modify|destroy)$'

That value will be compared against the targets of any new job we attempt to create, from the moment we added our "backup" job until it has been finished. Any attempt to create a new job with a target that matches the above lock will result in the error:

'Job target is currently locked by another job'

## Adding extra properties to workflows and jobs through API methods

While it's possible to add any arbitrary property to a workflow or a job (as far as the backend supports it), API methods filter out unknown attributes. In order to allow new attributes using the API, you need to specify these as an Array of attribute names added to the api config section, as follows:

{ "backend": { "module": "..", "opts": { } }, "api": { "port": 8080, "wf_extra_params": ["bar"], "job_extra_params": ["foo"] }, "runner": { ... } }

Workflow API and REST API.

You can create workflows and jobs either by using the provided REST API(s), or by embedding this module's API into your own system(s). The former will be easier to get up and running, but you should use the latter when:

You want to use the Worflow API in a node.js application that is not the bundled REST API.

You want to use a different backend storage system, or otherwise change the assumptions of the bundled REST API

The package also provides a binary file to run the WorkflowAPI using the same configuration file we pass to our WorkflowRunner :

./bin/workflow-api path/to/config.json

See REST API docs for the details of available end-points.

# Workflow Runners

In order to execute jobs , at least one WorkflowRunner must be up and ready to take jobs. An arbitrary number of runners can be used on any set of hosts; their configurations must match.

An example WorkflowRunner is provided with the package and can be started with:

./bin/workflow-runner path/to/config.json

The system design requires that we can have workflow runners everywhere. As many as needed, and all of them reporting health periodically.

All runners will periodically query the backend for information about other runners. If they detect one of those other runners has been inactive for a configurable period of time, they will check for stale jobs associated with that inactive runner and cancel those jobs.

The first thing a runner does when it boots is to register itself with the backend (which is the same as reporting its health). At a configurable interval a runner will try to pick queued jobs and execute them. Runners will report activity at this same interval.

Every runner must have a unique identifier, which can either be passed in at the runner's initialization, or be auto-generated the first time the runner is created and saved for future runs.

Runners will spawn child processes, one process per job. Max number of child processes is also configurable.

## How runners pick and execute jobs

A runner will query the backend for queued jobs (exactly the same number of jobs as available child processes to spawn). Once the runner gets a set of these queued jobs, it will try to obtain an exclusive lock on each job before processing it. When a job is locked by a runner, it will not be found by other runners searching for queued jobs.

Once the runner has an exclusive lock over the job, it'll change job status from queued to running, and begin executing the associated tasks.

In order to execute the job, the runner will spawn a child process, and pass it all the information about the job; child processes don't have access to the backend, just to the job, which must be a JSON object.

Note that everything must be executed within the acceptable amount of time provided for the job. If this time expires, the job execution will fail and the onerror branch will be executed when given.

Task execution:

A runner will then try to execute the job chain of tasks, in order. For every task, the runner will try to execute the task body using the node.js VM API, effectively as a separate process. Every task will get as arguments the job and a callback. A task should call the callback once it's completed.

// A task body: function(job, cb) { // Task stuff here: cb(null); }

If a task succeeds, it will call the callback without error :

cb(null);

Otherwise, the task should call the callback with an error message:

cb('whatever the error reason');

These error messages will be available for the task's onerror function, in order to allow a task's fallback to decide if it can recover the task from a failure.

It's also possible to set an specific timeout for every task execution.

If a task fails, or if the task timeout is reached, the runner will check if we've exceeded the number of retries for the task. If that's not the case, it'll try to execute the task again.

Once the max number of retries for a task has been reached, the runner will check if the task has a fallback . If that's the case, it'll call it with the error which caused the failure, as follows:

task.onerror(error, job, cb);

The same logic as for task bodies can be applied to fallbacks .

Note that tasks run sandboxed. Only the node modules we specify to the runner at initialization time, alongside with setTimeout , clearTimeout , setInterval and clearInterval global functions, will be available for task body and fallback functions (this will be configurable).

All the task results will be saved in order on the job's property chain_results . For every task, the results will be something like:

{ error: '', results: 'OK' }

or, for a task which failed:

{ error: 'Whatever the error reason', results: '' }

If the task fails because its fallback failed, or because the task doesn't have such a fallback, the job's onerror chain will be invoked if present.

The logic to execute the job's onerror chain is exactly the same as we've described here for the main chain of tasks.

Once the job is finished, either successfully or right after a failure, or even in the case a task tells the runner to re-queue the job, the child process running the job will communicate to runner the results. The runner will save back those results to the backend, and either finish the job, or re-queue it for another runner.

Using tasks to re-queue, retry or put jobs to wait

There are some special errors which can be used in task bodies to modify a job's execution status without making it fail. These are queue , wait and retry .

If you use any of the aforementioned keywords as the error returned by a task body, instead of failing the job it'll modify the job's status to either queued , waiting or retried .

Usually, you may want to re-queue a job together with a modification of the exec_after job property, so its execution will be delayed in time.

Retry can be used at any point in a job before it fails to make another attempt at running the complete job (not a single task).

Finally, waiting is available targeting those cases where a task fires an action to a third party system, and we don't want to keep polling the remote system from our task body until such remote action has finished. Instead, we can simply tell the job to hold on until something else tells it to continue. The remote system can then resume the job making a POST request to /jobs/:job_uuid/resume , which will bring the job status back to queued , and then executed by the runner from where it entered waiting the next time that runner has slots available.

Configuration options

The following is an example configuration for node-workflow, with all the relevant sections included:

{ "backend": { "module": "../lib/workflow-redis-backend", "opts": { "port": 6379, "host": "127.0.0.1", "db": 14 } }, "api": { "port": 8080 }, "runner": { "identifier": "cd925eef-93fb-4bfe-a820-2aaedf9fc006", "forks": 2, "do_fork": false, "run_interval": 250, "sandbox": { "modules": { "http": "http", "uuid": "node-uuid" }, "foo": "bar", "bool": true, "aNumber": 5 } }, "logger": { "streams": [ { "level": "info", "stream": "process.stdout" }, { "level": "debug", "path": "./some-file.log" }] } }

Backend

The backend configuration has two main sections: module and opts . The module value must be something we can use to load the backend module of choice by issuing require(backend.module) . It doesn't matter if it's a node.js npm module or a relative path to the module. The included module must be a class which inherits from WorkflowBackend .

The opts section is anything required by the chosen backend constructor to be initialized:

var BackendModule = require(config.backend.module); var backend = new BackendModule(config.backend.opts);

Both, API and Runner will communicate with the backend using the configuration provided on this section.

API

Anything you want to pass to restify.createServer. restify's server logger configuration will be the same as you provide for the logger section.

Note you can pass either a port number or a socket path here too.

Runner

The configuration for workflow runners. None of the options in this section is required.

identifier : the unique identifier for a runner. If none is given, the first time a runner is started it will generate an UUID and store it in a file -- workflow-runner -- which will be reused on the subsequent boots.

: the unique identifier for a runner. If none is given, the first time a runner is started it will generate an UUID and store it in a file -- -- which will be reused on the subsequent boots. do_fork : whether or not to fork child processes to run jobs tasks. ( true by default).

: whether or not to fork child processes to run jobs tasks. ( by default). forks : the maximum number of jobs to run in parallel by this runner. (The default is ten). Will also match the number of child processes to be forked by the runner when the option do_fork is either not set or true .

: the maximum number of jobs to run in parallel by this runner. (The default is ten). Will also match the number of child processes to be forked by the runner when the option is either not set or . run_interval : Integer. Time in milliseconds for the runner to: report it is active to the backend, search for new queued jobs to process, and search for stale jobs from other runners. Ten times this value is what's used to decide if a runner is inactive; if a runner hasn't reported it's healthy since 10 * run_interval , it'll be considered inactive by other runners, and all associated jobs will be canceled. The default run_interval is 250 milliseconds after the previous execution.

: Integer. Time for the runner to: report it is active to the backend, search for new queued jobs to process, and search for stale jobs from other runners. Ten times this value is what's used to decide if a runner is inactive; if a runner hasn't reported it's healthy since , it'll be considered inactive by other runners, and all associated jobs will be canceled. The default is 250 milliseconds after the previous execution. sandbox : any variables and node.js modules we want to make available for the VM where we run our tasks. The key for each member will be the identifier for referring to each object inside a task's body and fallback functions, while the value is what the system will use to require the module. For example: {uuid: 'node-uuid'} . Remember that, by default, only global node timers will be available for tasks if nothing is given.

Logger

Any streams you want to pass to node-bunyan, used by both Runners and REST API .

Demo

The workflow-example repository contains everything needed to illustrate:

An example config file config.json.sample which should be renamed to config.json , and modified to properly match your local environment.

Remember that, in order to process any job the workflow-runner needs to be initialized pointing to the aforementioned configuration file:

./node_modules/.bin/workflow-runner config.json

Also, in order to be able to run the API-based example mentioned below, the workflow-api HTTP server needs to be up and running too:

./node_modules/.bin/workflow-api config.json

Contents for the other files within the workflow-example repository are:

An example of how to use node-workflow as a node module in order to create workflows, queue jobs and wait for the results. See module.js .

. An example of how to achieve the same goal using the Workflow API instead of the node module. See api.js .

. Both examples share the same workflow definition, contained in the file shared-workflow.js . The beginning of the aforementioned files can be useful to understand the differences when trying to create a workflow using these different approaches.

. The beginning of the aforementioned files can be useful to understand the differences when trying to create a workflow using these different approaches. Finally, this directory also contains the file node.js , which does exactly the same thing as the workflow/job does -- create and star a gist using your github's username and password -- but straight from node.js. This file is useful in order to understand the differences between writing code to be executed by node.js directly, and using it to create workflows and the associated tasks. Remember, code within tasks runs sandboxed using Node's VM API and that tasks are totally independent.

See also example.js for more options when defining workflows and the different possibilities for task fallbacks, retries, timeouts, ...

LICENSE

The MIT License (MIT) Copyright (c) 2014 Pedro Palazón Candel

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

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