What is behavior if stepPage is missing?
It isn't hard to write code (activity, tranform, anything) that fails to check if a step page exists before referencing properties on that page.
What's the expected behavior?
If my memory serves me, in many times, it will simply use the current page. Sometimes it does fail.
Can we at least throw a WARN message?
I came across this reviewing code a few weeks back; I thought I'd asked this once on PDN, but I can't find it now.
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Pegasystems Inc.
CA
What do you mean if a StepPage exists? Like, if it has been instantiated on the clipboard?
Can you give a concrete example? If you do a Property-Set on a page that hasn't been instantiated you will just get the page on the clipboard with whatever properties you set on it.
BNY Mellon
US
Yes, that's what I mean -- that's what the function pageExists() defines.
Your memory is better. If the page doesn't exist in an activity step, it will simply instantiate it on the defined class. Which, I believe, should throw a runtime warning message to the log.
The behavior in UI elements and decision rules might be different, though.
The Pages & Classes tab ought to be updated to indicate the activity which creates the page. That would be a better developer-time governance check.
Pegasystems Inc.
IN
Hi Jon, Good Morning!
- from Pega 7 - if a step page is not declared under Pages & Classes tab & referred in a step would throw design time error on saving the activity rule
- method PageExistsWithClass() is preferred to PageExists()
- also please refer: https://pdn.pega.com/release-notes?version=8431 [Some pages may no longer be classless]
Thank you!
psahukaru
BNY Mellon
US
Certainly you can declare Pages & Classes in development, but whether that page is there at runtime is another matter. Most assuredly there should be a warning if findPage() is looking for a page that isn't there.