Didact DocsCreate Flow Library
The magic of Didact's orchestration happens in your dedicated .NET class library project. This class library project contains your Flows, which are container classes for your jobs. For simplicity, we will refer to it from here on out as the Flow Library.
These instructions will utilize the dotnet CLI for cross-platform support, but you are welcome to use Visual Studio if you are more comfortable with it.
Create class library project
First, you need to create your Flow Library.
- Open a terminal on your machine.
- In the terminal, type the following command:
dotnet new classlib -o FlowLibrary -f net8.0What is this?
This command will create a new class library project for you. The -o command specifies the project name and folder name, and the -f specifies the target framework version.
Why not .NET Standard 2.1?
If you are familiar with class library projects, you may be puzzled as to why you need to specify net8.0 as the target framework version rather than netstandard2.1. This is explained later in the docs (see Plugins), but for the moment, just know that this is both intentional and required.
- Navigate to the folder containing your new class library project with the following command:
cd FlowLibrary- Now add the
DidactCorenuget package with the following command:
dotnet add package DidactCoreFlow organization
As you will see on the Write a Flow page, each Flow is a separate C# class. When your Flows are loaded into Didact Engine, they will be fetched using tools like System.Reflection, so technically, you are free to organize your C# Flow classes as you see fit. However, simply because it is the common practice in C# to do so, I would recommend breaking your classes into one class per .cs file.
Additionally, if you are going to have other helper interfaces, classes, methods, or anything else inside of Flow Library, I would recommend making a Flows directory inside of the library to store all of your Flows in one, easy to find location.
TIP
This is not a requirement from Didact; I'm just trying to help you stay organized.
Version Control
This is discussed in greater detail within the Core Concepts section of the docs, but since your Flows are contained within a class library project, it is extremely easy for you to add version control - just the same as you would any other class library project! This is one of the primary benefits of having your Flows decoupled from the applications and other architecture within the Didact Platform.