How to use Symfony’s Workflow component for state management?

Symfony’s Workflow component allows you to define workflows and manage the state of objects in your application.

To use Symfony’s Workflow component for state management, follow these steps:

Install the Workflow component by running the following command in your Symfony project’s root directory:

composer require symfony/workflow

Define your workflow in a configuration file (e.g. workflows.yaml) by specifying the states, transitions, and initial state of your object. Here’s an example of a simple workflow configuration:

framework:
    workflows:
        article_workflow:
            marking_store:
                type: method
                property: currentState
            supports:
                - App\Entity\Article
            places:
                - draft
                - pending
                - published
            transitions:
                submit:
                    from: ['draft', 'pending']
                    to: pending
                publish:
                    from: pending
                    to: published
            initial_place: draft

Create a class that represents the object you want to track the state of (e.g. Article). Ensure that the class implements the MarkingStoreInterface and that it has a method that returns the current state of the object (e.g. getCurrentState()).
Initialize the Workflow component in your controller or service by using the WorkflowRegistry service to get the Workflow object corresponding to your workflow configuration. Here’s an example of how you can get the Workflow object for the article_workflow defined in the configuration file:

$workflow = $this->get('workflow.registry')->get('article_workflow');

Use the Workflow object to transition your object between states. You can do this by calling the apply() method on the Workflow object and passing the object and the name of the transition you want to apply. Here’s an example of how you can transition an Article object from the draft state to the pending state:

$article = new Article();
$workflow->apply($article, 'submit');

You can also check the possible transitions and available states for your object using the Workflow object’s can() and getMarking() methods. Here’s an example of how you can check if the publish transition is available for the article object and get its current state:

if ($workflow->can($article, 'publish')) {
    // Transition to published state
    $workflow->apply($article, 'publish');
}

$currentState = $workflow->getMarking($article)->getPlaces();

By following these steps, you can effectively use Symfony’s Workflow component for state management in your application.