Business Process Server provides a public API for the Home module called the BPM CustomUI API, exposing some internal features to provide more ease and flexibility for you. The BPM CustomUI API provides a convenient mechanism for you to incorporate features of the Business Process Portal within customized applications and to create your own specialized portals.
BPM CustomUI API features
In addition, BPM CustomUI API development allows streamlining of the code used to generate the various displayed pages, contributing to the page clarity and enabling you to easily grasp what is necessary to make the modifications you need. Part of BPM CustomUI APIs migrate existing precompiled JSP servlets to full-fledged dynamic JSP pages making use of this API, to make the task of Home module customization easier.
Two primary benefits are derived from a BPM CustomUI API:
The BPM CustomUI API exposes all the necessary elements for you to create customized pages.
The current code that generates display pages may also use the BPM CustomUI API with the benefits of simplicity and clearer structure, allowing you to quickly understand the structure and make modifications to display pages. The design also exposes the HTML for each type of element, allowing for fine-grained customization of each building block display of the Business Process Portal pages.
The API methods can be used to access and interact with the data available to the Business Process Portal, as well as to retrieve presentation for it. The retrieved presentation is made even more flexible through the use of templates, which is explained at the end of this chapter.
The API is provided as a set of related classes. The main class, BizSiteBean, is the point of entry for all uses of the API. The other classes like, BizSiteApp, BizSiteTask, BizSiteDataslot, and BizSiteProcess, are returned by some of the API methods that are part of BizSiteBean and are respectively used to represent applications, tasks, dataslots, and process instances. These supplemental classes contain methods to manipulate the types of data that they represent.
All applications that intend to incorporate API features must access them through the BizSiteBean, meaning the main preparation that must be made in all such applications is to provide access to this class. Through this single point of entry, the API may be used from within a number of different types of applications. These include JSPs and servlets. Its use in these various contexts are explained.
The BPM CustomUI API exposes all the necessary elements for you to create customized pages.