October 2007 - Posts
There is a interface IBaseMessageFactory that you can use to create instances of BizTalk messages and BizTalk message parts.
You can grab a handle to an instance of a subtype of this interface from within the Dissassemble method using the IPipelineContext.GetMessageFactory().
An important thing to note is that in order to preserve the message context you must grab this from the original message and poke it into the new instances created by the factory. The following code illustrates it.
public void Disassemble(Microsoft.BizTalk.Component.Interop.IPipelineContext pc, Microsoft.BizTalk.Message.Interop.IBaseMessage inmsg)
{
IBaseMessageContext sourceContext = inmsg.Context;
IBaseMessagePart part = inmsg.BodyPart;
// queue four messages to be processed in the GetNext() method.
// _msgs is a simple Queue
_msgs.Enqueue(CreateMessage(pc, sourceContext,part));
_msgs.Enqueue(CreateMessage(pc, sourceContext,part));
_msgs.Enqueue(CreateMessage(pc, sourceContext,part));
_msgs.Enqueue(CreateMessage(pc, sourceContext,part));
}
private string messageType = @"http://www.myschema.com/schemas/myschemamessage/MySchema";
private string systemPropertiesNamespace = @"http://schemas.microsoft.com/BizTalk/2003/system-properties";
public IBaseMessage CreateMessage(IPipelineContext pc, IBaseMessageContext sourceContext, IBaseMessagePart part)
{
IBaseMessage msg = pc.GetMessageFactory().CreateMessage();
msg.AddPart("Body", part, true);
// comment out the following line to preserve the original message
msg.BodyPart.Data = new MemoryStream(ASCIIEncoding.ASCII.GetBytes("blah blah blah"));
msg.Context = sourceContext;
msg.Context.Promote("MessageType", systemPropertiesNamespace, messageType);
return msg;
}
Using class member variables will not work if you want to persist state between invocations. This seems to be due to the way sharepoint manages timer jobs. A solution is to use the Properties *property* which is exposed to all SPJobDefinition subtypes. This is a hashtable which accepts a key value pair. Usage:
public class SampleTimerJob : SPJobDefinition
{
public SampleTimerJob(string jobName, SPWebApplication webApplication, string url, string email)
: base(jobName, webApplication, null, SPJobLockType.ContentDatabase)
{
ContainerSite = url;
Email = email;
this.Title = "sample timer";
}
public string ContainerSite
{
get { return Properties["site"].ToString(); }
set { Properties["site"] = value; }
}
public string Email
{
get { return Properties["email"].ToString(); }
set { Properties["email"] = value; }
}
public override void Execute(Guid targetInstanceId)
{
SPSite site = new SPSite(ContainerSite);
using (SPWeb web = site.OpenWeb())
{
SPUtility.SendEmail(web, false, false, Email,
"title",
"content");
}
}
}
The reason the Office Sharepoint Server Workflow Task is not visible is because it is assigned to a special group named "_Hidden" which precludes it from being displayed in the site collection content type view.
As it turns out content types are exposed and manipulable through the Sharepoint OM using the class SPContentType. You can get a list of content types from a SPWeb by invoking the getter on property ContentTypes:
SPSite site = new SPSite("http://splaptop");
using (SPWeb web = site.OpenWeb())
{
foreach (SPContentType contentType in web.ContentTypes)
{
if (contentType.Name == "Office SharePoint Server Workflow Task")
{
/*
* make a member of whatever group you like...
* nb. if group is == "_Hidden" (default) then it will not show up
* in the list of content types
*/
contentType.Group = "MOSS";
contentType.Update();
}
}
} The content type will now be visible when you try to assign it to a task list.
We have a workflow that is a mix of simple tasks and MOSS infopath forms server workflow tasks.
To that end we remove the TaskListContentTypeId from workflow.xml and use the CreateTaskWithContentType shape to manually set the content type on appropriate tasks. This works fine until we come to deploy on a fresh sharepoint site.
We get some kind of error in the sharepoint logs:
10/15/2007 15:29:09.76 w3wp.exe (0x145C) 0x144C Windows SharePoint Services Workflow Infrastructure 72ew Medium Object reference not set to an instance of an object.
10/15/2007 15:29:09.78 w3wp.exe (0x145C) 0x144C Windows SharePoint Services Workflow Infrastructure 88xr Unexpected WinWF Internal Error, terminating workflow Id# c345e730-f40d-4cb9-8197-f472143c8410
10/15/2007 15:29:09.78 w3wp.exe (0x145C) 0x144C Windows SharePoint Services Workflow Infrastructure 98d4 Unexpected System.Reflection.TargetInvocationException: Exception has been thrown by the target of an invocation. ---> System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object. at Microsoft.SharePoint.Workflow.SPWinOETaskService.CreateTaskWithContentTypeInternal(Guid taskId, SPWorkflowTaskProperties properties, Boolean useDefaultContentType, SPContentTypeId ctid, HybridDictionary specialPermissions) at Microsoft.SharePoint.Workflow.SPWinOETaskService.CreateTaskWithContentType(Guid taskId, SPWorkflowTaskProperties properties, String taskContentTypeId, HybridDictionary specialPermissions) --- End of inner exception stack trace --- at System.RuntimeMethodHandle._InvokeMethodFast(Object target, Object[] arguments, SignatureStruct& sig, MethodAttributes methodAtt...
10/15/2007 15:29:09.78* w3wp.exe (0x145C) 0x144C Windows SharePoint Services Workflow Infrastructure 98d4 Unexpected ...ributes, RuntimeTypeHandle typeOwner) at System.RuntimeMethodHandle.InvokeMethodFast(Object target, Object[] arguments, Signature sig, MethodAttributes methodAttributes, RuntimeTypeHandle typeOwner) at System.Reflection.RuntimeMethodInfo.Invoke(Object obj, BindingFlags invokeAttr, Binder binder, Object[] parameters, CultureInfo culture, Boolean skipVisibilityChecks) at System.Reflection.RuntimeMethodInfo.Invoke(Object obj, BindingFlags invokeAttr, Binder binder, Object[] parameters, CultureInfo culture) at System.RuntimeType.InvokeMember(String name, BindingFlags bindingFlags, Binder binder, Object target, Object[] providedArgs, ParameterModifier[] modifiers, CultureInfo culture, String[] namedParams) at System.Workflow.Activities.CallExternalMethodActivity.Execute(Acti...
10/15/2007 15:29:09.78* w3wp.exe (0x145C) 0x144C Windows SharePoint Services Workflow Infrastructure 98d4 Unexpected ...vityExecutionContext executionContext) at System.Workflow.ComponentModel.ActivityExecutor`1.Execute(T activity, ActivityExecutionContext executionContext) at System.Workflow.ComponentModel.ActivityExecutor`1.Execute(Activity activity, ActivityExecutionContext executionContext) at System.Workflow.ComponentModel.ActivityExecutorOperation.Run(IWorkflowCoreRuntime workflowCoreRuntime) at System.Workflow.Runtime.Scheduler.Run()
Which tells us a little, but not much.
So after a few :ahem: hours of digging around. It turns out that the problem manifests itself because when a tasklist for a wf instance is created by associating a workflow with a list - it sets up content types in the task list which sharepoint uses to marshal tasks. We weren't seeing the problem because we only started using CreateTaskWithContentType activities half way through the development cycle.
We can see this by looking at the task list, going to "Settings"..."Advanced Settings", and checking "Allow management of content types". OK that and scroll down the summary screen and there *should* be a content type named "Office SharePoint Server Workflow Task". If there is not you need to associate the content type with the task list and everything should be tickety boo. (you can do this quick and dirty by adding the content type id to the workflow.xml and recreating the task list when you assign the workflow).
If you click "Add from existing site content types" the type will not be visible. I will update when I find how you do this.
I was looking for a way to store references to forms libraries.. web services etc from sharepoint workflows and also infopath forms hosted by MOSS forms server.
They both run under the same process therefore can access configuration settings in the web.config of the container web application.
They all run under the w3wp process
In both cases you want to debug "workflow code"