Hello @rmcdaniel!

I love the idea of implementing the workflow pattern in Laravel! Tried to use this package in my sandbox environment and had a quick look at the code as well.

A few things I've discovered:

• Content of serialized exception is broken when using PostgreSQL (text column exception), and that's probably because of https://stackoverflow.com/questions/28813409/are-null-bytes-allowed-in-unicode-strings-in-postgresql-via-python/28816294#28816294
• Codebase is weakly typed, with no coverage, backward compatibility, or mutation testing results available.
• I'm not sure how this project fits in long term. I saw some messages on Twitter around the topic of Enterprise Laravel, but the solution itself seems too raw to me at the moment.

If I decide to use this package in production, I'm looking to become a stable contributor to improve the solution.

Let me know what you think, Sincerely, Michael

I've tried to wrap a complex process into the workflow. The package indeed has a hard time restoring activities with DTO, Value Objects, or Enums inside.

It's of course possible to create all the code using only primitive types, but in enterprise scenarios that would be a massive productivity killer. It would be nice to make it work at least as native jobs as they can hold objects with no problem even though that is not a best practice for performance.

Example stacktrace of failing activity (Eloquent Enum Cast):

Cannot instantiate enum App\Enums\TransactionType {"exception":"[object] (Error(code: 0): Cannot instantiate enum App\\Enums\\TransactionType at /var/www/html/vendor/opis/closure/src/SerializableClosure.php:411)
[stacktrace]
#0 /var/www/html/vendor/opis/closure/src/SerializableClosure.php(411): ReflectionClass->newInstanceWithoutConstructor()
#1 /var/www/html/vendor/opis/closure/src/SerializableClosure.php(427): Opis\\Closure\\SerializableClosure::wrapClosures()
#2 /var/www/html/vendor/opis/closure/src/SerializableClosure.php(427): Opis\\Closure\\SerializableClosure::wrapClosures()
#3 /var/www/html/vendor/opis/closure/functions.php(19): Opis\\Closure\\SerializableClosure::wrapClosures()
#4 /var/www/html/vendor/laravel-workflow/laravel-workflow/src/Serializers/Y.php(45): Opis\\Closure\\serialize()
#5 /var/www/html/vendor/laravel-workflow/laravel-workflow/src/WorkflowStub.php(200): Workflow\\Serializers\\Y::serialize()
#6 /var/www/html/vendor/laravel-workflow/laravel-workflow/src/Middleware/WorkflowMiddleware.php(15): Workflow\\WorkflowStub->next()
#7 /var/www/html/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Pipeline/Pipeline.php(180): Workflow\\Middleware\\WorkflowMiddleware->handle()
#8 /var/www/html/vendor/laravel-workflow/laravel-workflow/src/Middleware/WithoutOverlappingMiddleware.php(75): Illuminate\\Pipeline\\Pipeline->Illuminate\\Pipeline\\{closure}()
#9 /var/www/html/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Pipeline/Pipeline.php(180): Workflow\\Middleware\\WithoutOverlappingMiddleware->handle()
#10 /var/www/html/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Pipeline/Pipeline.php(116): Illuminate\\Pipeline\\Pipeline->Illuminate\\Pipeline\\{closure}()
#11 /var/www/html/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Queue/CallQueuedHandler.php(126): Illuminate\\Pipeline\\Pipeline->then()
#12 /var/www/html/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Queue/CallQueuedHandler.php(70): Illuminate\\Queue\\CallQueuedHandler->dispatchThroughMiddleware()
#13 /var/www/html/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Queue/Jobs/Job.php(98): Illuminate\\Queue\\CallQueuedHandler->call()
#14 /var/www/html/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Queue/Worker.php(425): Illuminate\\Queue\\Jobs\\Job->fire()
#15 /var/www/html/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Queue/Worker.php(375): Illuminate\\Queue\\Worker->process()
#16 /var/www/html/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Queue/Worker.php(173): Illuminate\\Queue\\Worker->runJob()
#17 /var/www/html/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Queue/Console/WorkCommand.php(147): Illuminate\\Queue\\Worker->daemon()
#18 /var/www/html/vendor/laravel/framework/src/Illuminate/Queue/Console/WorkCommand.php(130): Illuminate\\Queue\\Console\\WorkCommand->runWorker()
#19 /var/www/html/vendor/laravel/horizon/src/Console/WorkCommand.php(51): Illuminate\\Queue\\Console\\WorkCommand->handle()

Hi @rmcdaniel

I was trying the package again and came to the issue of passing parameters to the workflow. For example, I want to pass validated input from form-request to the workflow and action.

This isn't documented, and I needed to dig deeper. It looks like you pass arguments in the raw format (serialized). Even more, there are required parameters passed in case of activity (index, now, etc) which is a bit unintuitive from the DX point of view (I tried to type-hint all the stuff in the constructor first).

Maybe there's a way to avoid unserializing arguments manually? Or I'm approaching this wrong?

I use PostgreSQL as the database and PHP 8.2.

The PostgreSQL duplicate key exception differs from the MySQL SQL error, which leads to an exception in the code because it uses the case-sensitive str_contains function. See below:

    public function next($index, $now, $class, $result): void
    {
        try {
            $this->storedWorkflow->logs()
                ->create([
                    'index' => $index,
                    'now' => $now,
                    'class' => $class,
                    'result' => serialize($result),
                ]);
        } catch (QueryException $exception) {
            if (! str_contains($exception->getMessage(), 'Duplicate')) { // <---- HERE
                throw $exception;
            }
        }

        $this->dispatch();
    }

The SQL error from a PostgreSQL looks like this:

SQLSTATE[23505]: Unique violation: 7 ERROR:  duplicate key value violates unique constraint 

And here, as an example, the output of str_contains using the uppercase and lowercase variation.

> echo var_dump(str_contains('Unique violation: 7 ERROR:  duplicate key', 'Duplicate'));
bool(false)
> echo var_dump(str_contains('Unique violation: 7 ERROR:  duplicate key', 'duplicate'));
bool(true) 

Hi,

Thanks for creating this simple yet powerful workflow package for Laravel community.

However, I follow the document to setup the Workflow, found the status won't change to "Completed" when contains a signal method.

The steps to re-produce the issue...

Workflow file

<?php

namespace App\Workflows\Demo;

use Workflow\ActivityStub;
use Workflow\SignalMethod;
use Workflow\Workflow;
use WOrkflow\WorkflowStub;

class DemoWorkflow extends Workflow
{
    private bool $isReady = false;

    #[SignalMethod]
    public function ready()
    {
        $this->isReady = true;
    }

    public function execute()
    {
        $resultOne = yield ActivityStub::make(StepOneActivity::class);

        yield WorkflowStub::await(fn () => $this->isReady);
//        yield WorkflowStub::timer(5);
//        $resultApprove = yield WorkflowStub::awaitWithTimeout('5 minutes', fn() => $this->approve());

        $resultTwo = yield ActivityStub::make(StepTwoActivity::class);

        return $resultOne . $resultTwo;
    }
}

Step 1 activity

<?php

namespace App\Workflows\Demo;

use Workflow\Activity;

class StepOneActivity extends Activity
{
    public function execute()
    {
        // Executing step 1
        return 'Step 1 completed';
    }
}

Step 2 activity

<?php

namespace App\Workflows\Demo;

use Workflow\Activity;

class StepTwoActivity extends Activity
{
    public function execute()
    {
        // Executing step 2
        return 'Step 2 completed';
    }
}

Controller

<?php

namespace App\Controllers;

use App\Http\Controllers\Controller;
use App\Workflows\Demo\DemoWorkflow;
use Workflow\WorkflowStub;

class WorkflowController extends Controller
{
    public function index()
    {
        $workflow = WorkflowStub::make(DemoWorkflow::class);
        $workflow->start();

        return $workflow->id();
    }

    public function ready(int $workflow_id)
    {
        $workflow = WorkflowStub::load($workflow_id);
        $workflow->ready();

        return true;
    }

    public function status(int $workflow_id)
    {
        $workflow = WorkflowStub::load($workflow_id);

        return $workflow->status();
    }
}

First I call index method to create the workflow, StepOneActivity executed, workflow pending wait for ready signal, next call ready method from controller to set the isReady property to true, Horizon shows the StepTwoActivity been executed, but from Waterline dashboard, the workflow still on running.

Here below is the screenshot of related records in database. Although the status not changed to completed, but the updated_at column is being updated.

StepOneActivity and StepTwoActivity are both executed, only the Workflow status not being updated to completed.

If comment the line

yield WorkflowStub::await(fn () => $this->isReady);

Then the workflow can changed to completed.

Please kindly advise if any steps missed, many thanks!

hi richard,

found this:

SQLSTATE[42000]: Syntax error or access violation: 1067 Invalid default value for 'created_at' (SQL: create table `workflow_logs` (`id` bigint unsigned not null auto_increment primary key, `stored_workflow_id` bigint unsigned not null, `index` bigint unsigned not null, `now` timestamp not null, `class` text not null, `result` text null, `created_at` timestamp(6) not null) default character set utf8mb4 collate 'utf8mb4_unicode_ci')

version: 0.0.10 SQL server: 10.7.4-MariaDB-1:10.7.4+maria~focal

• Opis\Closure\SerializableClosure implements the Serializable interface, which is deprecated. Implement __serialize() and __unserialize() instead (or in addition, if support for old PHP versions is necessary) in /var/www/html/vendor/opis/closure/src/SerializableClosure.php on line 18

This pull request updates the StoredWorkflow, StoredWorkflowException, StoredWorkflowLog, and StoredWorkflowSignal classes to use the values returned by config('workflows.stored_workflow_model'), config('workflows.stored_workflow_exception_model'), config('workflows.stored_workflow_log_model'), and config('workflows.stored_workflow_signal_model'), respectively, rather than hardcoding the class names. This allows developers to specify their own custom classes that extend these classes and customize their behavior. The main reason would be to customize the $connection options.

This adds the excellent https://github.com/opis/closure library to add some better compatibility plus cryptographic signatures when serializing/unserializing exceptions.

Fix exception logging when the exception happens inside the workflow. Also add support for carbon intervals like 5 minutes instead of having to specify in seconds 300.

This PR adds a new middleware that was partially written by ChatGPT. The built-in Laravel middleware WithoutOverlapping wouldn't support the ability for parallel activities so I wrote one with the help of ChatGPT.

Here's an example of how you would use it:

$promise1 = ActivityStub::make(MyActivity::class);
$promise2 = ActivityStub::make(MyActivity::class);

yield ActivityStub::all([$promise1, $promise2]);

This is still a work in progress...

[2023-01-02 15:18:32] local.ERROR: Serialization of 'Closure' is not allowed {"exception":"[object] (Exception(code: 0): Serialization of 'Closure' is not allowed at /Users/rabol/code/web/wftest/vendor/laravel/serializable-closure/src/Serializers/Signed.php:68)

This looks like a regression from a previous issue with storing exception messages.