Understanding flow definitions

A flow definition is composed of a set of states. Each state will have a unique ID in the flow definition. There are five types of state available in Spring Web Flow:

  • start-state: Each flow must have a single start state, which helps in creating the initial state of the flow. Note that if the start-state is not specified, the very first defined state within the flow definition file becomes the start state.
  • action-state: A flow can have many action states; an action-state executes a particular action. An action normally involves interacting with backend services, such as executing some methods in Spring managed beans; Spring Web Flow uses the Spring Expression Language to interact with the backend service beans.
  • view-state ...

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