Hi folks,
I'd appreciate some suggestions on the topic of exposing jBPM REST API to a custom client application.
Cliff Notes:
Bulding a custom smartphone app (not just using BPM Console client). Better to re-use the REST API already exposed by the Console-Server or roll our own REST API for jBPM? (See details below for better explanation)
Details:
Let's say we want to build a smartphone app that provides a small subset of what the BPM Console browser app does along with some other functionality specific to our own application. To be clear, the smartphone app doesn't just interact with jBPM. If that were the case, then I assume it would be a no-brainer to have the smartphone app directly hit the Console-Server.
I'm thinking the smartphone app makes REST calls to our own server API. From there, one option would be for our server API to make REST API calls to the Console-Server (also running in our server environment) for jBPM related things like get a list of tasks, claim a task, etc.
Would that be preferrable to rolling our own? Or would it be better to skip using the Console-Server and have our API server side code use the jBPM Java API instead. I'm assuming I can do things like get a list of tasks for a user, claim a test, etc using the jBPM Java API (I haven't dug deep into the capabilities of the jBPM Java API). I have seen the list of available URIs prvided by the Console-Server so I think I have a handle on what the Console-Server API exposes.
Many thanks for your input.