The previous tutorial had our two actors introducing themselves. In that scenario, we've given one actor the role of initiator and another of recipient.
In this tutorial, we'll model a situation where a random number of people have a conversation. They first all need to introduce themselves after which each one can talk.
Create file meeting.yaml in scenarios.
Create subdirectory meeting in features for the test files.
Start action
So far, we've created scenarios in which an actor initiates the process. In this tutorial, we’ll introduce a start action, which can only be triggered by a service, such as your backend or a microservice. This is a common pattern that prevents users from starting a process directly.
In this case, a start action is necessary because the scenario involves only a wildcard actor. Instead of relying on predefined participants, the start action will dynamically create the actors participating in the process.
We don't exactly know how many participants the process will have. However, we do that each participant has essentially the same role. We'll number the actors when we instantiate the process.
Test case
In the initial state, everyone has the opportunity to introduce themselves. With an introduction, we stay in the initial state. When someone starts to talk we transition to the talking state.
meeting/golden.feature
Feature: Three persons introduce themselves and have a conversation
Background:
Given the process is created from the "meeting" scenario
And "Bob" is the "person_1" actor
And "Eve" is the "person_2" actor
And "Jack" is the "person_3" actor
When the "default" service does "start" with:
"""yaml
person_1: ~
person_2: ~
person_3: ~
"""
Then the process is in "introductions"
And the process has actor "person_1"
And the process has actor "person_2"
And the process has actor "person_3"
Scenario:
When "Bob" does "introduce" with:
| name | Bob |
| organization | Jasny |
Then the process is in "introductions"
And the last event is not skipped
And actor "person_1" has "name" is "Bob"
And actor "person_1" has "organization" is "Jasny"
When "Eve" does "introduce" with:
| name | Eve |
| organization | Acme Inc |
Then the process is in "introductions"
And the last event is not skipped
And actor "person_2" has "name" is "Eve"
And actor "person_2" has "organization" is "Acme Inc"
When "Jack" does "introduce" with:
| name | Jack |
| organization | LTO Network |
Then the process is in "introductions"
And the last event is not skipped
And actor "person_3" has "name" is "Jack"
And actor "person_3" has "organization" is "LTO Network"
When "Bob" does "talk" with "What do you think about the weather?"
Then the process is in "talking"
And the last event is not skipped
When "Eve" does "talk" with "It's pretty cold"
Then the process is in "talking"
And the last event is not skipped
When "Bob" does "talk" with "True, but at least it's not raining"
Then the process is in "talking"
And the last event is not skipped
When "Jack" does "talk" with "I like blockchain!"
Then the process is in "talking"
And the last event is not skipped
Then the result is:
"""yaml
- Bob - What do you think about the weather?
- Eve - It's pretty cold
- Bob - True, but at least it's not raining
- Jack - I like blockchain!
"""
Scenario
Instead of defining the actors individually, we use a wildcard. The actor schema is applied to every actor with the key person_{number}.
For goto we can use null (which is ~ in YAML) to indicate that we don't want to transition to another state.
It's bad practice to have a process without an end state. We'll add a way to end the conversation later in this tutorial.
Everyone introduced?
In the introduction tutorial, the state machine ensured that both parties introduced themselves before starting the conversation. However, in this scenario, that requirement no longer applies. If the actors' names are already known, they don’t need to introduce themselves. Additionally, actors should not be required to introduce themselves more than once.
Test case
meeting/conditions.feature
Feature: People are not committing to the social norms
Background:
Given the process is created from the "meeting" scenario
And "Bob" is the "person_1" actor
And "Eve" is the "person_2" actor
And "Jack" is the "person_3" actor
When the "default" service does "start" with:
"""yaml
person_1: ~
person_2: ~
person_3: ~
"""
Then the process is in "introductions"
And the process has actor "person_1"
And the process has actor "person_2"
And the process has actor "person_3"
Scenario: Person introduces himself and starts to talk
When "Bob" does "introduce" with:
| name | Bob |
| organization | Jasny |
And "Bob" does "talk" with "What do you think about the weather?"
Then the last event is skipped
Scenario: Person starts talking without introducing himself
When "Bob" does "introduce" with:
| name | Bob |
| organization | Jasny |
When "Eve" does "introduce" with:
| name | Eve |
| organization | Acme Inc |
When "Jack" does "talk" with "I like blockchain!"
Then the last event is skipped
Scenario: Person does an introduction twice
When "Bob" does "introduce" with:
| name | Bob |
| organization | Jasny |
When "Bob" does "introduce" with:
| name | Bob Builder |
| organization | Jasny |
Then the last event is skipped
Scenario: Person tries to talk twice
When "Bob" does "introduce" with:
| name | Bob |
| organization | Jasny |
When "Eve" does "introduce" with:
| name | Eve |
| organization | Acme Inc |
When "Jack" does "introduce" with:
| name | Jack |
| organization | LTO Network |
When "Bob" does "talk" with "What do you think about the weather?"
Then the process is in "talking"
When "Bob" does "talk" with "I like it"
Then the last event is skipped
Scenario
For the "introduce" action we specify a condition to prevent an actor from performing it if we already know its name.
We'll add a condition statement for state transition from "initial" to "talking", which validates that the name of every actor is known.
The last condition is on the "talk" action. We compare if the current actor is not the actor of the previous event to ensure a person doesn't talk twice.
When all actors are known from the start, we can skip the "introductions" state entirely and move directly into the "talking" state, streamlining the workflow.
Test case
meeting/no-introductions.feature
Feature: Two persons have a conversation without an introduction
Background:
Given the process is created from the "meeting" scenario
And "Bob" is the "person_1" actor
And "Eve" is the "person_2" actor
When the "default" service does "start" with:
"""yaml
person_1:
name: Bob
organization: Jasny
person_2:
name: Eve
organization: Acme Inc
"""
Then the process is in "talking"
And the process has actor "person_1"
And the process has actor "person_2"
Scenario:
When "Bob" does "talk" with "What do you think about the weather?"
Then the process is in "talking"
And the last event is not skipped
When "Eve" does "talk" with "It's pretty cold"
Then the process is in "talking"
And the last event is not skipped
Then the result is:
"""yaml
- Bob - What do you think about the weather?
- Eve - It's pretty cold
"""
Scenario
We use an if condition for the state transition that checks if there are any actors for which the name is unknown.
Instead of ending the interaction, any person can choose to leave. The remaining persons can continue the conversation. When there are less than two persons left, the process should end.
Test case
meeting/leave.feature
Feature: People leave the conversation
Background:
Given the process is created from the "meeting" scenario
And "Bob" is the "person_1" actor
And "Eve" is the "person_2" actor
And "Jack" is the "person_3" actor
When the "default" service does "start" with:
"""yaml
person_1:
name: Bob
organization: Jasny
person_2:
name: Eve
organization: Acme Inc
person_3:
name: Jack
organization: LTO Network
"""
Then the process is in "talking"
And actor "person_1" has "is_present" is true
And actor "person_2" has "is_present" is true
And actor "person_3" has "is_present" is true
Scenario: Person leaves and later the second leaves
When "Bob" does "talk" with "What do you think about the weather?"
When "Eve" does "talk" with "It's pretty cold"
When "Bob" does "talk" with "True, but at least it's not raining"
When "Jack" does "talk" with "I like blockchain!"
When "Bob" does "leave"
Then actor "person_1" has "is_present" is false
And the process is in "talking"
When "Eve" does "talk" with "What is blockchain?"
And "Jack" does "talk" with "Do you know Bitcoin?"
And "Eve" does "talk" with "*sigh*"
When "Eve" does "leave"
Then actor "person_2" has "is_present" is false
And the process ended with:
"""yaml
- Bob - What do you think about the weather?
- Eve - It's pretty cold
- Bob - True, but at least it's not raining
- Jack - I like blockchain!
- Eve - What is blockchain?
- Jack - Do you know Bitcoin?
- Eve - *sigh*
"""
Scenario: Person tries to say something after already left
When "Bob" does "talk" with "What do you think about the weather?"
And "Eve" does "talk" with "It's pretty cold"
When "Bob" does "leave"
And "Bob" does "talk" with "True, but at least it's not raining"
Then the last event is skipped
The scenario
We add an is_present property to the actor, which defaults to true. The "leave" action will set is_present to false for the current actor.
As long as there are two or more actors present, the "leave" action will not cause a state transition. If that condition is not true, the process will end. Transitions are validated in order. Therefore we only need to have a condition on the first transition of "leave" action in the "talking" state.
We can use if conditions to disallow an action or a transition. The field needs to contain a boolean value. We typically use for conditions. This function performs a query against the process.
