Thank you Kris for the explanation. It helps.<div><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Thu, Nov 6, 2008 at 3:42 PM, Kris Verlaenen <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:kris.verlaenen@cs.kuleuven.be" target="_blank">kris.verlaenen@cs.kuleuven.be</a>></span> wrote:<br>
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<div>> If I try to set variable that hasn't been declared in the ruleflow
header - the variables section. I get following error:<br>> "Could not find
variable someVariableName<br>> Continuing without setting value"</div>
<div><font size="2" face="Arial"></font> </div>
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<div><font size="2" face="Arial">Actually, the problem here is not that you
cannot set the value of a variable that is not defined in the process. It
is possible to simply set the value of a variable on a variable context
instance, even if the variable has not been defined. The problem here
however is that variable contexts can be nested: a composite node can define a
sub-context, where the variables defined in this context are only accessible
from inside that composite node. Whenever you try to set the value of a
variable, I must first search for the right variable scope. This searching
is based on the definition of these variables. At this point, if it cannot
find the variable, it simply does not set the value. There are however
other option:</font></div>
<div><font size="2" face="Arial"> - set the value on the top-level context
(i.e. process-level variables)</font></div>
<div><font size="2" face="Arial"> - set the value on the lowest-level context
(the most deeply nested container)</font></div>
<div><font size="2" face="Arial"> - allow the user to specify the
context</font></div>
<div><font size="2" face="Arial">I think I might change the default behaviour to
setting the value on the process-level scope, as that is how I already do it
when getting the value of a variable.</font></div>
<div><font size="2" face="Arial"></font> </div>
<div><font size="2" face="Arial">You can also manually select the scope yourself in
your action, e.g. setting to the process-level scope can be done
using:</font></div>
<div><font size="2" face="Arial">((VariableScopeInstance)
(context.getProcessInstance().getContextInstance(VariableScope.VARIABLE_SCOPE))).setVariable("name",
value);</font></div>
<div><font size="2" face="Arial"></font> </div>
<div><font size="2" face="Arial">Of course, a Util class could hide these internal
structures for you.</font></div>
<div><font size="2" face="Arial"></font> </div><font color="#888888">
<div><font size="2" face="Arial">Kris</font></div></font></div></div>
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<br></blockquote></div><br></div>