Invoke Windows Workflow Recursively

Question

I have a workflow, that at a certain point, needs to be triggered recursively.

I can't seem to figure out how to do this.

I tried the following code but context ends up being null??

private void codeTriggerChildren_ExecuteCode(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    ActivityExecutionContext context = sender as ActivityExecutionContext;
    //context is null here?!

    IStartWorkflow aWorkflow = context.GetService(typeof(ApprovalFlow)) as IStartWorkflow;

    Dictionary<string, object> parameters = new Dictionary<string, object>();
    parameters.Add("Parm1", "foo");
    parameters.Add("Parm2", "bar");

    Guid guid = aWorkflow.StartWorkflow(typeof(ApprovalFlow), parameters);
}

Answer 1

Your sender is of type CodeActivity not ActivityExecutionContext. You need to create a custom activity and override the Execute method which will pass you a ActivityExecutionContext.

Answer 2

Primarily the problem here is that the sender in this case is a CodeActivity not an ActivityExecutionContext. So this code fails at the first hurdle.

Here is an example of custom activity that can do what you are after:-

public class RecurseApproval : Activity
{
 protected override ActivityExecutionStatus Execute(ActivityExecutionContext executionContext)
 {
  IStartWorkflow aWorkflow = executionContext.GetService(typeof(IStartWorkflow)) as IStartWorkflow;

  Dictionary<string, object> parameters = new Dictionary<string, object>();
  parameters.Add("Param1", "Foo");
  parameters.Add("Param2", "bar");

  Guid guid = aWorkflow.StartWorkflow(typeof(ApprovalWorkflow), parameters);

  return ActivityExecutionStatus.Closed;

 }
}

Note that the GetService gets type of IStartWorkflow.