Data States

It is possible to explicitly define states by creating DataStates:

Invoice.xml

<dataElement name="Invoice">
  <dataStates>
    <dataState name="Initial"/>
    <dataState name="Sent"/>
    <dataState name="Paid"/>
    <dataState name="Booked"/>
  </dataStates>
</dataElement>

These values are then expanded as a <dataElement>State enum:

public enum InvoiceState implements IStateDef {
  INITIAL("Initial"),
  SENT("Sent"),
  PAID("Paid"),
  BOOKED("Booked");

  private String status;
  //...
}

These enums describe the different states, which can be retrieved through the getStatus() method.

The State class has 2 advantages:

• You can use the setStatusEnum() and getStatusAsEnum() method to manage the state of a details object. These methods add more type-safety than the standard String-based methods.
• The State class is also used with the isBranchingTask Option.