Book Image

Microsoft Windows Workflow Foundation 4.0 Cookbook

By : Andrew Zhu
Book Image

Microsoft Windows Workflow Foundation 4.0 Cookbook

By: Andrew Zhu

Overview of this book

Windows Workflow Foundation 4.0 (WF) is a significant part of .NET Framework 4.0. WF makes workflow technology available to every single programmer that uses the .NET Framework 4.0. It is easy to create long running and distributed programs using WF with the right knowledge. With this book, you will discover that working with workflows is easy. This book provides both step-by-step recipes and relevant background information. It covers all the important aspects of Windows Workflow Foundation 4.0. The best thing about this book is that all recipes are based on real-world experiences of Andrew Zhu. Andrew is a global WF and BizTalk technology support engineer for Microsoft. This book covers everything you need to know, when working with workflows. Get to grips with flow control activities, messaging, and transaction processes with easy to understand steps followed by explanations. You will quickly learn to use collection and custom WF activities and WF services.You will see recipes that illustrate integration of Windows Workflow with other applications such as WPF, ASP.NET, WCF service.Lastly, you will discover how easily you can customize W4 Designer with WF rule engine and others.
Table of Contents (15 chapters)
Microsoft Windows Workflow Foundation 4.0 Cookbook
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
Foreword
Preface
Index

Introduction


Sometimes, workflow users are non-developers who may not have installed Visual Studio 2010. These users need the ability to create and/or modify workflow definitions with designer support for things such as dragging and dropping of activities. WF4 provides a set of WPF classes that we can reference and use to create our own custom workflow designer, allowing for creating of rich administration tools for our workflow solutions.

There are several important classes involved in creating custom hosted workflow designers.

  • System.Activities.Presentation.WorkflowDesigner:

    WorkflowDesigner provides a designer canvas that renders the visual workflow model. WorklfowDesigner.View represents the designer canvas. We can get the property inspector view from WorkflowDesigner.PropertyInspectorView.

  • System.Activities.Presentation.ToolboxControl

    ToolboxControl renders categorized workflow activities in the toolbox. We can use System.Activities.Presentation.Toolbox.ToolboxCategory to create...