Creating a Custom WorkItemHandler in jBPM for Eclipse

Assuming you have Eclipse and the jbpm dependencies installed correctly via maven you can create custom work items with the following steps:

#1 Under src/main/resources/ in your eclipse project create a file called "CustomWorkItem.wid" where you put your custom workitem definition:

import org.drools.process.core.datatype.impl.type.StringDataType;

[
[
"name" : "CustomWorkItem",
"parameters" : [
"keywords" : new StringDataType(),
"limit" : new StringDataType()
],
"displayName" : "CustomWorkItem"
]
]

#2 Create another file called "drools.rulebase.conf" in the same directory where you register your custom workitem definition like so:

drools.workDefinitions = CustomWorkItem.wid WorkDefinitions.conf

#3 Create a java class that implements the Interface "WorkItemHandler" from the package "org.kie.api.runtime.process.WorkItemHandler". You will get the following two method stubs from the interface:

public void abortWorkItem(WorkItem workItem, WorkItemManager manager) { }

public void executeWorkItem(WorkItem workItem, WorkItemManager manager) { }

The executeWorkItem method will be called by the bpm engine when the business process reaches your custom work item handler.

#4 Register your custom WorktItemHandler class with the bpm engine:

kSession.getWorkItemManager().registerWorkItemHandler("CustomWorkItem", new CustomWorkItemHandler());

Note that the first parameter should match the name from the work item definition and the second parameter should be a new instance of your custom work itemhandler java class created in step #3.

#5 Restart eclipse and use the new custom work item as a task in your business process!