There are dozens of posts and talks about how Symfony Workflows work and what they are for. To give you the simplest example, if you have a post - it can be drafted, reviewed, or published. The workflow component makes sure the transitions between these states are valid. That's it.

Yet, there is not a single post about how terrible the configuration is.

On one hand, we have Symfony components, like Event Dispatcher and Console, with native PHP 8 strict attributes. On the other hand, we have **Workflows configuration with a fractal array of strings**. It's like a minefield for a developer who's tasked with adding a new line there.

How can we do it better?

Tomas Votruba

Managing Symfony Workflows can be complex due to error-prone configurations with arrays of strings. The post discusses alternative methods using PHP scripts, simplifying the process and enhancing readability and maintainability. It introduces testing workflows through the MermaidDumper tool to ensure continuity and proposes a WorkflowBuilder class for better validation and clarity.

How we Maintain Dozens of Symfony Workflows with Peace

<p>Thanks Thomas for this excellent article. I haven’t worked with Workflows, but I really dig your iterative approach. “It’s working” vs. “It’s enabling me to express what I want to do”. I will definitely show this to my juniors. Thanks again ! :) Greets from Vienna, Ben</p>
