Difficulty to configure Activiti into a Springboot application api

Question

First of all is it a viable thing to embed Activiti into an API type application for use within that application or should Activiti be run standalone?

The error below is due to bean definition but I'm not sure where the beans should be defined and how - if thats correct approach for version 6. Our standards with Springhboot 2 is to annotate beans in java rather than xml context

Error starting ApplicationContext. To display the conditions report re-run your application with 'debug' enabled.
2019-04-10 21:17:43.924 ERROR 19516 --- [  restartedMain] o.s.b.d.LoggingFailureAnalysisReporter   : 

***************************
APPLICATION FAILED TO START
***************************

Description:

Field runtimeService in ma.cvmeeting.workflow.WorkflowApplication$MyrestController required a bean of type 'org.activiti.engine.RuntimeService' that could not be found.

The injection point has the following annotations:
    - @org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Autowired(required=true)


Action:

Consider defining a bean of type 'org.activiti.engine.RuntimeService' in your configuration.


Process finished with exit code 0

code:

import org.activiti.engine.RuntimeService;
import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Autowired;
import org.springframework.boot.SpringApplication;
import org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.SpringBootApplication;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.GetMapping;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RestController;

@SpringBootApplication
public class WorkflowApplication {

public static void main(String[] args) {
    SpringApplication.run(WorkflowApplication.class, args);
}



@RestController
public static class MyrestController{


    @Autowired
    private RuntimeService runtimeService;


    @GetMapping("/start-process")
    public String startProcess() {

        runtimeService.startProcessInstanceByKey("Potulerauneoffre");
        return "Process started. Number of currently running"
                + "process instances = "
                + runtimeService.createProcessInstanceQuery().count();
    }
}

pom.xml:

<project>

    <groupId>ma.cvmeeting</groupId>
    <artifactId>workflow</artifactId>
    <version>0.0.1-SNAPSHOT</version>
    <name>workflow</name>
    <description>Demo project for Spring Boot</description>

   <parent>
        <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-parent</artifactId>
        <version>2.1.4.RELEASE</version>
        <relativePath/> <!-- lookup parent from repository -->
    </parent>

    <properties>
        <java.version>1.8</java.version>
    </properties>

    <dependencies>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-web</artifactId>
        </dependency>

        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.activiti</groupId>
            <artifactId>activiti-engine</artifactId>
            <version>7-201802-EA</version>
        </dependency>

        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-boot-devtools</artifactId>
            <scope>runtime</scope>
        </dependency>

        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.thymeleaf</groupId>
            <artifactId>thymeleaf</artifactId>
            <version>3.0.11.RELEASE</version>
        </dependency>

        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.h2database</groupId>
            <artifactId>h2database</artifactId>
            <version>1.0.20061217</version>
        </dependency>

        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.projectlombok</groupId>
            <artifactId>lombok</artifactId>
            <optional>true</optional>
        </dependency>

        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-test</artifactId>
            <scope>test</scope>
        </dependency>
    </dependencies>

    <build>
        <plugins>
            <plugin>
                <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
                <artifactId>spring-boot-maven-plugin</artifactId>
            </plugin>
        </plugins>
    </build>

</project>

Answer 1

There are two ways to initialize the engine when you embed it in your spring based application: 1.) let spring initialize it for you so you can use all the engine services right away without need of any configuration. this requires activiti-spring-boot-starter as dependency. 2.) You initialize engine by your self and provide the services beans from @Configuration class. for this you will require only activiti-engine core as dependency

The reason your application cannot find the RuntimeService because you are trying the second approach add the below dependency in your pom.xml and remove the engine one

<dependency>
    <groupId>org.activiti</groupId>
    <artifactId>activiti-spring-boot-starter</artifactId>
</dependency>

you should follow documentation for more help.