SpiffWorkflow

Spiff Workflow is a workflow engine implemented in pure Python. It is based on the excellent work of the Workflow Patterns initiative. In 2020 and 2021, extensive support was added for BPMN / DMN processing.

Motivation

We created SpiffWorkflow to support the development of low-code business applications in Python. Using BPMN will allow non-developers to describe complex workflow processes in a visual diagram, coupled with a powerful python script engine that works seamlessly within the diagrams. SpiffWorkflow can parse these diagrams and execute them. The ability for businesses to create clear, coherent diagrams that drive an application has far reaching potential. While multiple tools exist for doing this in Java, we believe that wide adoption of the Python Language, and it's ease of use, create a winning strategy for building Low-Code applications.

Dependencies

We've worked to minimize external dependencies. We rely on lxml for parsing XML Documents, and there is some legacy support for Celery, but it is not core to the implementation, it is just a way to interconnect these systems. Built with

Features

  • BPMN - support for parsing BPMN diagrams, including the more complex components, like pools and lanes, multi-instance tasks, sub-workflows, timer events, signals, messages, boudary events and looping.
  • DMN - We have a baseline implementation of DMN that is well integrated with our Python Execution Engine.
  • Forms - forms, including text fields, selection lists, and most every other thing you can be extracted from the Camunda xml extension, and returned as json data that can be used to generate forms on the command line, or in web applications (we've used Formly to good success)
  • Python Workflows - We've retained support for building workflows directly in code, or running workflows based on a internal json data structure.

A complete list of the latest features is available with our release notes for version 1.0.

Code Examples and Documentation

Detailed documentation is available on ReadTheDocs Also, checkout our example application, which we reference extensively from the Documentation.

Installation

pip install spiffworkflow

Tests

cd tests
./run_suite.sh

GitHub

https://github.com/sartography/SpiffWorkflow