How to get outArgument WorkflowApplication when wf wait for response(bookmark OR idle) and not complete

Question

Accessing Out Arguments with WorkflowApplication when wf wait for response(bookmark OR idle) and not complete

Answer 1

Even simpler: Use another workflow activity to store the value you are looking for somewhere (database, file, ...) before starting to wait for a response!

Answer 2

I also used Tracking to retrieve the values, but instead of saving it to a database I come up with the following solution.
Make a Trackingparticipant and collect the data from an activity. You can fine tune the tracking participant profile with a spefic tracking query. I have added a public property Output to set the value of the data from the record.

public class CustomTrackingParticipant : TrackingParticipant
{
        //TODO: Fine tune the profile with the correct query.
        public IDictionary<String, object> Outputs { get; set; }
        protected override void Track(TrackingRecord record, TimeSpan timeout)
        {
            if (record != null)
            {
                if (record is CustomTrackingRecord)
                {
                    var customTrackingRecord = record as CustomTrackingRecord;
                    Outputs = customTrackingRecord.Data;
                }
            }
        }
    }

In your custom activity you can set the values you want to expose for tracking with a CustomTrackingRecord. Here is a sample to give you an idea.

protected override void Execute(NativeActivityContext context)
{
    var customRecord = new CustomTrackingRecord("QuestionActivityRecord");
    customRecord.Data.Add("Question", Question.Get(context));
    customRecord.Data.Add("Answers", Answers.Get(context).ToList());
    context.Track(customRecord);
    //This will create a bookmark with the display name and the workflow will go idle.
    context.CreateBookmark(DisplayName, Callback, BookmarkOptions.None);
}

On the WorklfowApplication instance you can add the Tracking participant to the extensions.

workflowApplication.Extensions.Add(new CustomTrackingParticipant());

On the persistable idle event from the workflowApplication instance I subscribed with the following method. In the method I get the tracking participant from the extensions. Because we have set the outputs in the public property we can access them and set them in a member outside the workflow. See the following example.

private PersistableIdleAction PersistableIdle(WorkflowApplicationIdleEventArgs 
workflowApplicationIdleEventArgs)
{
    var ex = workflowApplicationIdleEventArgs.GetInstanceExtensions<CustomTrackingParticipant>();
    Outputs = ex.First().Outputs;
    return PersistableIdleAction.Unload;
}

I hope this example helped.

Answer 3

You could use Tracking.

required steps would be:

• define a tracking profile which queries ActivityStates with the state closed
• Implement an TrackingParticipant to save the OutArgument in process memory, a database or a file on disk
• hook everything together

The link cotains all the information you will need to do this.