w i z a r d 4 j

Use cases

The target audience for this project are java software developers. Any java application that has some 'flowchart logic' inside (configuration wizards, helpdesk guidelines, surveys, template preprocessing, ...) can benefit from wizard4j, especially when this logic is complex or requires frequent updates.

An important principle in wizard4j is that a 'wizard run' consists of 2 phases:

  1. flowchart run: phase in which information is gathered from interaction with a user (human or machine).
  2. template application: phase in which the earlier gathered information is applied to a template (built-in or dedicated).

The project defines a flowchart xml language to describe flowcharts in a formal way (so this logic is no longer burried in the rest of the code). Next it provides an engine written in java to 'run' these flowcharts, removing e.g. one of the most boring/annoying jobs in programming: creating and parsing forms.

Note that the flowchart xml language is programming language agnostic, so it could be used in a wizard4php, wizard4ruby, ... project.

Architecture

The next picture shows the most important building blocks and interfaces in the wizard4j project.

A 'flowchart run' creates a sequence of user interactions. Several user interaction interfaces are provided: java api, html forms, restful web service, .... The result of a 'flowchart run' can be presented by various built-in presentations or the result can be applied to an existing template framework like Velocity or Freemarker.

The wizard4j version management, release management and bug tracking is done at sourceforge.