Scripts can be used to perform various operations, such as to manipulate data, for example. PlanetPress Workflow can perform scripts written in four different scripting languages and also provides an interface for editing scripts.
While this chapter provides some very useful and detailed information about scripting within PlanetPress Workflow, its focus is to inform you about the features, variables and functions unique to this environment. This chapter assumes that you have a working knowledge of the scripting language you wish to use and does not purport to teaching you anything about this language that you don't already know. Learning any of these language is beyond the scope of this documentation.
There are four scripting languages available through the Run Script task: JavaScript, VBScript, Python and Perl. Each language has its own strengths and weaknesses which we will not cover in this documentation. While VBScript is the most used language at the moment, the examples provided in this chapter are presented in all supported languages.
While JavaScript and VBScript are natively available on Windows operating systems. Python and Perl require third-party tools to be functional. For Perl, ActivePerl can be installed. For Python, please see HOWTO-1504 in the Objectif Lune Knowledge Base.
When using the Run Script as a condition, you need a way to tell your process whether the result is true or false. The condition result is returned by the Script.ReturnValue variable. If the return value is zero (the default), the condition is false. Otherwise, it is true.
When using the Run Script as an action task, the job file going out of the Run Script action task will be the same as the one coming in, unless you have specifically changed it within your script by writing to the file that is the target of the Watch.GetJobFileName function. The same goes for any job info, local or global variables, unless you use the Watch.SetJobInfo or Watch.SetVariable functions to modify them.
Multiple APIs (methods of communicating with PlanetPress Workflow scripting tools) are available through the scripting engine, in all languages.