File System Watcher Integrate with Windows Workflow Foundation

Today I want to share how to integrate file system watcher in workflow. There are a few ways to do it. Option 1 (simple way) is whenever there is a file is dropped into a folder, the file system watcher will kick in and spawn a workflow instance to process your file. Option 2 (hard way) is to integrate file system watcher into the workflow which mean you need just 1 workflow instance to wait for file watcher event fire then process the file. I want to share the hard way.

Concept

Here is the flow of the concept. Picture is worth a thousand words.

Challenges

In order to implement the above flow, I need a custom workflow activity to handle the logic. I chose to use NativeActivity is because I need to use the bookmarking feature. Bookmarking can induce idle, I want to keep my workflow instance idle state whenever there is no file exists in the folder.

Next challenge is whenever an instance has gone idle, the activity context will be different when the file system watcher event kick in to wake the instance to resume the process. Therefore, I need a custom workflow instance extension to handle the bookmark resume by implementing IWorkflowInstanceExtension.

Implementation

First, prepare the custom workflow instance extension which can support the resume bookmark functionality.

public class FileReceiveExtension : IWorkflowInstanceExtension

{

    private WorkflowInstanceProxy _proxy;

    public IEnumerable<object> GetAdditionalExtensions()

    {

        return null;

    }

    public void SetInstance(WorkflowInstanceProxy instance)

    {

        _proxy = instance;

    }

    public void ResumeBookmark(Bookmark bookmark, FileInfo file)

    {

        IAsyncResult result = _proxy.BeginResumeBookmark(bookmark, file,

            (asyncResult) =>

            {

                    

            }, null);

    }

}

Next, create a custom NativeActivity then add the custom workflow instance extension into the activity cache metadata.

protected override void CacheMetadata(NativeActivityMetadata metadata)

{

    metadata.AddDefaultExtensionProvider<FileReceiveExtension>(() => new FileReceiveExtension());

    base.CacheMetadata(metadata);

}

Set the CanInduceIdle property value to true.

protected override bool CanInduceIdle

{

    get

    {

        return true;

    }

}

Write the custom activity implementation to create file system watcher and register the necessary event handler.

protected override void Execute(NativeActivityContext context)

{

    //Get the folder path from the activity parameter

    string monitoringPath = context.GetValue(this.MonitoringPath);

    FileSystemWatcher watcher = new FileSystemWatcher();

    watcher.Path = monitoringPath;

    watcher.NotifyFilter = NotifyFilters.FileName | NotifyFilters.LastWrite;

    watcher.Created += watcher_Created;

    watcher.Error += watcher_Error;

    watcher.EnableRaisingEvents = true;

    _extension = context.GetExtension<FileReceiveExtension>();

    _bookmark = context.CreateBookmark(BookmarkResumed);

}

Write the implementation of file system watcher created event.

private void watcher_Created(object sender, FileSystemEventArgs e)

{

    //Resume the bookmark and pass the FileInfo object as activity parameter

    _extension.ResumeBookmark(_bookmark, new FileInfo(e.FullPath));

}

Write the implementation of bookmark resume event.

private void BookmarkResumed(NativeActivityContext context, Bookmark bookmark, object value)

{

    FileInfo file = (FileInfo)value;

    //Call your own file processor method

    //Note: I am using async for better performance (Optional)

    Task task = _fileProcessor.ProcessAsync(file);

    task.ContinueWith((e) =>

    {

        if (e.IsFaulted)

        {

            Console.WriteLine(e.Exception);

        }

    });

    //Create a new bookmark immediately after a file is being processed

    _bookmark = context.CreateBookmark(BookmarkResumed);

}

Draw the workflow with the new custom activity. The Start and Stop receive activities are used to control my file system watcher process by making service call.

Start hosting the workflow service, then call the Start web method to test it out. You only need to call the method once to spawn one workflow instance only. Since I had created the custom file receive activity that accept monitoring path, you can spawn another workflow instance to have another instance of file system watcher which monitor different file path.

If you are interested with the source code, feel free to download it from HERE.