Mastering Activiti Event Listeners in Spring Boot: Task and Process Runtime Events

This article demonstrates how to integrate Activiti workflow engine event listeners into a Spring Boot project.

Task Runtime Event Listeners

The primary listener interface is TaskRuntimeEventListeners , which receives RuntimeEvent objects. Two commonly used events are TaskAssignedEvent (task assignment) and TaskCompletedEvent (task completion).

TaskAssignedEvent

@Configuration
public class EventListenerConfig {
    private static Logger logger = LoggerFactory.getLogger(EventListenerConfig.class);

    @Bean
    public TaskRuntimeEventListener<TaskAssignedEvent> taskAssignedListener() {
        return taskAssignedEvent -> {
            logger.info("BusinessKey: {}", taskAssignedEvent.getBusinessKey());
            Task task = taskAssignedEvent.getEntity();
            logger.info("task, id: {}, name: {}, assignee: {}", task.getId(), task.getName(), task.getAssignee());
            logger.info("ProcessDefinitionId: {}", taskAssignedEvent.getProcessDefinitionId());
        };
    }
}

This listener simply logs assignment details; you can extend it with custom business logic.

TaskCompletedEvent

@Bean
public TaskRuntimeEventListener<TaskCompletedEvent> taskCompletedEvent() {
    return taskCompletedEvent -> {
        logger.info("BusinessKey: {}", taskCompletedEvent.getBusinessKey());
        Task task = taskCompletedEvent.getEntity();
        logger.info("task, id: {}, name: {}, owner: {}", task.getId(), task.getName(), task.getOwner());
    };
}

When a task finishes, this listener logs the relevant information.

Process Runtime Event Listener

For process-level events, use ProcessRuntimeEventListener with RuntimeEvent . The example below handles ProcessCompletedEvent :

@Bean
public ProcessRuntimeEventListener<ProcessCompletedEvent> processCompletedEvent() {
    return processCompletedEvent -> {
        ProcessInstance instance = processCompletedEvent.getEntity();
        logger.info("任务发起人：{}", instance.getInitiator());
    };
}

This listener is triggered when a process instance ends.

Testing the Listeners

Start a task via the endpoint

/holidays/start?processDefinitionId=holiday:1:...&userId=10000

, which assigns the task to the user with ID 10000. The console output shows the logged assignment details.

Subsequent calls such as

/holidays/apply?days=3&mgr=10001&explain=生病&instanceId=...

assign the task to a manager, and the logs confirm the assignment.

Important Authentication Note

To ensure the task initiator is correctly recorded, set the authenticated user before starting the process:

public void startProcessInstanceAssignVariables(String processDefinitionId, Map<String, Object> variables) {
    Authentication.setAuthenticatedUserId((String) variables.get("assignee"));
    ProcessInstance processInstance = runtimeService.startProcessInstanceById(processDefinitionId, variables);
    logger.info("流程定义ID: {}", processInstance.getProcessDefinitionId());
    logger.info("流程实例ID: {}", processInstance.getId());
    logger.info("BussinessKey: {}", processInstance.getBusinessKey());
}

The assignee parameter corresponds to the user who initiates the task via the start endpoint.

After the process completes, the act_hi_procinst table contains the initiator information.