Creating an entity

Brian

Hi everyone.

I'm trying to figure out how to create an entity in the custom process.

Suppose that I have Person object in which it has two fields.
One is Name of string and the other is reference field called AddressID which is required field.

I need to create in the custom process.
I've tried two ways to do it.

First I used Query.
String query = "CREATE Person WITH Name = 'Tom' , AddressID = " + (Long)1234";
Then I run it like this. engine.executeQuery...
This caused an "parse exception". Assigning AddressID might be wrong I guess.

Second try was using createEntity() method.
This also caused an error saying " AddressID must be provided".
But I don't know how to pass along the AddressID when executing creatEntity() method since the method signature doesn't provide other argument that I can pass the parameters.

I'm not sure if my try is on the right way since it is the first try to do this.

I want any advice to test it out.

Thanks in advance.

Brian

With repeated tries, entities don't seem to be created by Query class.

So that means only createEntity() method be used to create an entity in the custom process.

What steps do I have to take to create an entity with required field?
Isn't there anyone who's gone through this?

Rennur

Hi Brian,

Can you please clarify some things:

I'm trying to figure out how to create an entity in the custom process.

By entity, do you mean a 'business object'?

Suppose that I have Person object in which it has two fields.
One is Name of string and the other is reference field called AddressID which is required field.

Field 1: Name = Plain text attribute?
Field 2: Reference attribute to the Address business object?

I need to create in the custom process.

Using a AwareIM process or a Custom Software Component?

Second try was using createEntity() method.
This also caused an error saying " AddressID must be provided".
But I don't know how to pass along the AddressID when executing creatEntity() method since the method signature doesn't provide other argument that I can pass the parameters.

Are these part of AwareIM out-of-box functions found in the User Guide :?:

Rennur

If by,
1) createEntity() you mean the AwareIM CREATE function
2) entity = business object

Then you bypass the "AddressID must be provided" by adding NO VALIDATION at the end of your process rule.

eg.

CREATE Person WITH Name = 'Tom' NO VALIDATION
VIEW Person

The created Person object will then be displayed, and you can then 'ADD NEW' AddressID to this Person object

Hope this helps

Cheers

Rennur

CODE CORRECTION:

CREATE Person WITH Person.Name='Tom' NO VALIDATION
VIEW Person

Brian

Hi, Rennur.
Thanks for your interest first and I'm sorry about the not-clear explanation.
Let me try to explain the situation again.

Overall, I'm using awareim process and basically most of terms I'm using comes from "Programmer's Reference".
And I'm trying to create business object using JAVA.
AwareIM allows to use JAVA-written custom process.

Yes. Entity is used as a class name and term of representing business object .

Name is a type of "Plain text" and business object Person has a reference attribute to the Address business object which is marked as "Value must be provided" so that I provide the reference value when creating.

To summarize, I have two business objects, Person and Address.
Person has "Plain text" type of Name and "Reference Attribute" type of AddressID. This AddressID is marked as "Value must be provided".
Address has a "Plain text" type of "Addr".

In this case, I want to create a Person business object in here of course using JAVA.

I hope that you get understood.

At the moment, I have come accross a method "createEntityFromTemplate" and it's giving me a hunch that it might be a solution but I couldn't find the relavant javadoc..

Rennur

Sorry, can't help you there then, JAVA is out my league.

I don't think you'd find many JAVA programmers here as most of us have chosen AwareIM so we don't have to code in JAVA.

Your question is probably more suited for support.

Hope you get the answers form someone

Cheers

BobK

Brian,

You will need several different methods to create a Business Object (BO) from a custom process.

createEntityTemplate is a method of the DomainFactory class and creates an IEntityTemplate which is basically an empty record of the BO.

setAttributeValue is a method of the IEntityTemplate class and sets the values of the BO Attributes. This would be used to set the value of your Name attribute.

setReferences is also a method of the IEntityTemplate class and would be used to set your AddressID reference field. I have never used this method, but I believe your reference object needs to already exist in the database and you need to know its ID.

createEntityFromTemplate is a method of the IExecutionEngine class and is what actually writes the data to the database.

The java docs for AwareIM’s API used to be in the AwareIM/docs/api folder. But this folder has been empty for the last few builds. I have these java docs from a backup of an earlier AwareIM build. If you would like a copy, PM me your e-mail address and I will zip them up and send them to you.

Let me know if you have any other questions or need more details on the above methods.

Brian

Thanks you all for all consideration about this issue.

Thanks to Bob, I got to know how to create business object with reference attribute.

Below is how I did and hope that help others if they have same issue(if any).

//step 1. Get IEntityDefinition and set entity name to it
IExecutionContext context = engine.getExecutionContext(this);
IDomainVersion domainVersion = context.getDomainVersion();
IEntityDefinition defPerson= domainVersion.getEntityDefinition("Person");

//step 2. Get IEntityTemplate using IEntityDefinition above
IEntityTemplate tempPerson= DomainFactory.createEntityTemplate(defPerson);

//step 3. Set primitive data types(String, Long etc)
tempPerson.setAttributeValue("Name", "Brian" );

//4. Set Reference attribute
// Array size can vary depening on the situation.(I used one in my case)
ObjectReference[] refAddress = new ObjectReference[1];
refAddress [0] = new ObjectReference("Address", id);
tempPerson.setReferences("AddressID", refAddress);

//5. Create Entity and done
engine.createEntityFromTemplate(this, tempPerson, null);

Note that createEntityFromTemplate(this, tempPerson) method don't fire rules associated with it.(if any) while createEntityFromTemplate(this, tempPerson, null) method should execute rules associated with it(if any).

hpl123

Thanks Brian for sharing the final results/solution.