Compute WorkOrder End Date

Prerequisite: You must be familiar with the Syntax used in Tutorials

In this usecase, we want to automatically compute the end date of a WorkOrder to its start date + a fixed delay of 2 hours.

• To do it with the Designer you must have Designer PHP developer profile.
• To do it with an extension, you must have already created an extension.

By default on a WorkOrder the End date is mandatory, so we change this logic, as it is useless to require the user to enter a data which will be set automatically just after.

itop_design / classes

    <class id="WorkOrder" _delta="must_exist">
      <fields>
        <field id="end_date">
          <!-- allowing ticket_id to be empty, as it will be computed -->
          <is_null_allowed _delta="redefine">true</is_null_allowed>
        </field>
      </fields>
    </class>

Computation is not something which can be done with XML. For this we need to add a PHP method on the class WorkOrder to compute the end_date. And we want this method to be automatically called when the object is persisted.

• You can decide when this method should be called amongst the existing events
• You can call the callback method as you like, also the Designer proposed name is a good base

Below we will list different (Event | callback method) which can be used to achieve the current usecase

At creation or on modification, if the Start Date is modified by the user, the End Date must be automatically recomputed, just before being checked, then written to Database.

class:WorkOrder

  public function EvtBeforeWrite(Combodo\iTop\Service\Events\EventData $oEventData)
  {
     $oStartDate = new DateTime($this->Get('start_date'));
     $oEndDate = clone $oStartDate;
     $iDuration = 2*3600 ; // 2 hours in seconds
     $oEndDate->modify( '+'.$iDuration.' seconds');
     $this->Set('end_date',$oEndDate->Format(AttributeDateTime::GetInternalFormat()));
  }

itop_design version="3.1" | classes

    <class id="WorkOrder">
      <event_listeners>
        <event_listener id="EvtBeforeWrite" _delta="define">
        <!-- Id of the event does not have to be the same as the callback method, but why not -->
          <event>EVENT_DB_BEFORE_WRITE</event>
          <rank>10</rank>
          <callback>EvtBeforeWrite</callback>
          <!-- The callback must be the name of an existing class method. The name is free. Signature is imposed -->
        </event_listener>
      </event_listeners>

There is another event which can be used to compute a field.

Exactly the same logic as above

class:WorkOrder

  public function EvtComputeValues(Combodo\iTop\Service\Events\EventData $oEventData)
  {
     $oStartDate = new DateTime($this->Get('start_date'));
     $oEndDate = clone $oStartDate;
     $iDuration = 2*3600 ; // 2 hours in seconds
     $oEndDate->modify( '+'.$iDuration.' seconds');
     $this->Set('end_date',$oEndDate->Format(AttributeDateTime::GetInternalFormat()));
  }

itop_design version="3.1" | classes

    <class id="WorkOrder">
      <event_listeners>
        <event_listener id="EvtComputeValues" _delta="define">
          <!-- Id of the event does not have to be the same as the callback method, but why not -->
          <event>EVENT_DB_COMPUTE_VALUES</event>
          <rank>10</rank>
          <callback>EvtComputeValues</callback>
        </event_listener>
      </event_listeners>

Here we want to prevent any user to enter the “End date” (end_date) of a WorkOrder, because just above we have forced it's value by computation.

If we don't do it, the user has the feeling that he can/must set it manually, also it's entry will eventually be overwritten.

This time we create 2 methods, one for controlling the creation form and one for the modification form

class:WorkOrder

  public function evtSetInitialAttributeFlags(Combodo\iTop\Service\Events\EventData $oEventData)
  {   
    $this->ForceInitialAttributeFlags('end_date', OPT_ATT_READONLY); 
  }
  public function evtSetAttributeFlags(Combodo\iTop\Service\Events\EventData $oEventData)
  {   
    $this->ForceAttributeFlags('end_date', OPT_ATT_READONLY); 
  }

Then we do the plumbing, by listing to the event and specifying the callback method declared above

itop_design version="3.1" | classes

    <class id="WorkOrder">
      <event_listeners>
        <event_listener id="evtSetInitialFlags" _delta="define">
          <!-- Id of the event does not have to be the same as the callback method, but why not -->
          <event>EVENT_DB_SET_INITIAL_ATTRIBUTES_FLAGS</event>
          <rank>10</rank>
          <callback>evtSetInitialFlags</callback>
        </event_listener>
        <event_listener id="evtSetAttributeFlags" _delta="define">
          <event>EVENT_DB_SET_ATTRIBUTES_FLAGS</event>
          <rank>10</rank>
          <callback>evtSetAttributeFlags</callback>
        </event_listener>
      </event_listeners>

FYI: Old methods now deprecated.