StateMachine Real World Intended Usage / Best Practices

[Karl Falconer]

Hello,

I am working on a prototype using state_machine, but I am a bit confused about how it is intended to be used in a real application. I have a state machine (see below) that, has a few states, that move in a linear progression with the exception that any action can cause an error.

1. In my application, each event corresponds to logic that should be performed via a web service call. What I am confused about is how should I be tying my application logic into these events? From the examples, there are many different ways to do this. before_transition callbacks, Observer, override the event method, and call super. What are the best practices? 

2. An additional concern is how will transitions work for methods that are executed asynchronously (via delayed_job). Since 

3. Lastly, are there any examples/patterns that would be helpful in creating a "Driver Class" that would execute its next event based on its transition sequence. In my application there is no user interaction, so it need to know and fire the next event until it reaches the end state.

Thanks for the help.

Karl

state_machine :status, :initial => :new, :action => :save do

  event :process do

    transition :from => :new, :to => [:processing, :errored]

  end

  

  event :close do

    transition :from => :processing, :to => [:closed, :errored]

  end

  state :errored

  state :new

  state :processing

  

  state :closed

end