1. Online edit Office files with
customized WebDAV
2013.11. 27
Takeshi Totani
© 2013

2. Online editing Office files
Once upon a time...
You could open CIFS folders from your Web browser.
●
Current functionality
Alfresco provides SharePoint protocol emulation (vti) module
●You can edit Office files from Share interface.
●
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3. Why re-invent online edit?
Be simpler
Alfresco SharePoint module runs jetty inside tomcat webapps :-(
●We are not interested in SharePoint collaboration (vti), we just
want to edit online!
●
Current limitations
Vti cannot online-edit content which is located outside Share
sites.
●WebDAV requires authentication even when you are logged in to
Share.
●WebDAV file path length easily reaches IE s url limitation when
multibyte characters are included in the path as these
characters are URL encoded to 6 or 9 alphabet characters for
each!
●
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4. Implementation strategy
Prepare new WebDAV interface
Add servlet and filter definition to web.xml
●WebDAV classes are based on the Alfresco original ones.
●
WebDAV path
Path is constructed as:
●<ALFRESCO_TICKET>/<CONTENT_UUID>.<EXTENSION>
●
<ALFRESCO_TICKET>: alfreco login ticket
● <CONTENT_UUID>: last part of alfresco noderef
● <EXTENSION>: file extension
●
This technic can resolve the three previous issues!
●
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5. Demo
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6. WebDAV implementation
Implement methods
Only implement limited methods needed for online edit:
●
GET
● LOCK/UNLOCK
● PROPFIND/PROPPATCH
● PUT
● DELETE
● OPTIONS
●
Authentication
Ticket based authentication
●use Alfresco java method:
●
authenticationService.validate(ticket);
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7. Share extension
Add Doclib custom action
share-config-custom.xml
<!-- Custom DocLibActions config section -->
<config evaluator="string-compare" condition="DocLibActions">
<actions>
<action id="online-edit" type="javascript" label="label.my_action_online_edit">
<param name="function">onActionEditOnline</param>
<permissions>
<permission allow="true">Write</permission>
</permissions>
<evaluator>evaluator.doclib.action.isContentType</evaluator>
</action>
</actions>
<actionGroups>
<actionGroup id="document-browse">
<action index="400" id="online-edit" />
</actionGroup>
</actionGroups>
</config>
Get current user s login ticket
Cannot get login ticket from Share client side.
●Prepared small WebScript to get the ticket.
●
share-config-custom.xml
model.ticket = session.getTicket();
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8. Windows Client settings: update registry values
All Windows Clients
Create the key below if it does not exist.
●
HKCU/Software/Microsoft/Office/<version No>/Common/
Internet/OpenDocumentsReadWriteWhileBrowsing
１
Windows Vista/7 Clients
Update value
●
HKLM/SYSTEM/CurrentControlSet/services/WebClient/
Parameters/BasicAuthLevel
2
※not tested for Windows 8
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9. source code and reference
Project files
github repo: https://github.com/to2y/AlfrescoOnlineEditWebDAV
●run on (at least) Alfresco community 4.2.d
●comments and/or pull requests are welcome!
●
Reference
http://wiki.alfresco.com/wiki
●http://www.slideshare.net/terajun/alfrescoui
●
Contact
takeshi.totani@aegif.jp
●
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