An overview about some of the possible ways to implement Portlets for integrating Alfresco in your own portal.

1. Integrating Alfresco with portals
6th November 2013
Piergiorgio Lucidi
#SummitNow

2. Piergiorgio Lucidi
•
•
•
•
•
•
Open Source ECM Specialist at Sourcesense
Alfresco Trainer / Engineer / Wiki Gardener / Star
Alfresco Global Moderator of the italian forum
Author / Technical Reviewer at Packt Publishing
PMC Member / Mentor at Apache Software
Foundation
Project Leader in the JBoss Community
#SummitNow
#SummitNow

3. Overview
• Introducing portals
• Introducing standard portlets
• Implementing portlets
• Alfresco Web Services API
• Spring WebScripts
• OpenCMIS
• Spring Surf
#SummitNow
#SummitNow

4. Overview
• Introducing portals
• Introducing standard portlets
• Implementing portlets
• Alfresco Web Services API
• Spring WebScripts
• OpenCMIS
• Spring Surf
#SummitNow
#SummitNow

5. Introducing portals
An overview about the basics and the
standards of portals
#SummitNow
#SummitNow

6. What is a portal?
A portal is a web application focused on
• Creating dynamic website
• Page-centric approach
• Aggregation of contents
• Enterprise Services
#SummitNow
#SummitNow

7. What is a portal?
A portal is a web application focused on
• Creating dynamic website
• user oriented and extremely dynamic fragments
• Page-centric approach
• Aggregation of contents
• Enterprise Services
#SummitNow
#SummitNow

8. What is a portal?
A portal is a web application focused on
• Creating dynamic website
• Page-centric approach
• Each page hosts presentation layer apps
• Portlets
• Apps (wrapping using bridge framework)
• Gadgets (based on XML and JavaScript)
• Aggregation of contents
• Enterprise Services
#SummitNow
#SummitNow

9. What is a portal?
A portal is a web application focused on
• Creating dynamic website
• Page-centric approach
• Aggregation of contents
• Enterprise Services
#SummitNow
#SummitNow

10. What is a portal?
A portal is a web application focused on
• Creating dynamic website
• Page-centric approach
• Aggregation of contents
• Enterprise Services
•
•
•
•
•
Authentication
Authorization
Personalization
Export / Import
APIs for integrations
#SummitNow
#SummitNow

11. What is a portal?
#SummitNow
#SummitNow

12. What is a portal?
A portlet is an application that contains specific
business logic
• Provides a fragment of content
• The output depends on user permissions
• Potentially the fragment could be dynamic for each user
• A permission can be given for
• The entire portal
• Page
• Portlet
#SummitNow
#SummitNow

13. What is a portal?
An app is a wrapper of a portlet and it can be
implemented using
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Pure Java
JSF
Spring MVC
Spring WebScripts
GWT
Struts
So on…
#SummitNow
#SummitNow

14. What is a portal? – User roles
#SummitNow
#SummitNow

15. What is a portlet container?
A portlet container is a runtime framework
• Manages the execution of portlet requests
• Provides user session mechanism
• Check permissions for different scope levels
• Portal
• Page
• Portlet
• Implements JSR-286 Java Portlet Specification 2.0
• Can be embedded in any JEE application
• Portlet requests can be executed against non-web contexts
• The web context is a detail!
#SummitNow
#SummitNow

16. What is a portlet container?
Portal A
Portal B
Portal C
• Portlet 1
• Portlet 2
• Portlet 3
• Portlet 4
• Portlet 5
• Portlet 6
#SummitNow
#SummitNow

17. Why use a portal?
You may want a portal for
• Creating custom and dynamic websites
• Providing personalized contents
• Providing features for personalizing sections
• Integrating different systems with a unique frontend
• Providing valuable services for your customers/users
• Private access
• Profiled informations
• E-commerce
• Advanced editing
• Enterprise Content Management (ECM)
#SummitNow
#SummitNow

18. Why use a portal with Alfresco
Portal aggregates corporate apps and contents
Agile development
Decoupling responsabilities
Fragments can be managed by Alfresco
• Records Management
• Content and Document Management
• Web Publishing
• BPM
The portal is responsible for presentation
• Portlets will present contents managed by Alfresco
Portlets are based on Enterprise Java
standards!!!
#SummitNow
#SummitNow

19. What is a dashboard?
#SummitNow
#SummitNow

20. How a portal works
The portlet container (PC) retrieves the portlet deployment
descriptor (PDD) from all the applications deployed in the
Java container (JSE or JEE)
• web-app.war
• WEB-INF
• portlet.xml
• web.xml
• Deployment Descriptors (DD) are used in many
Enterprise Java components
#SummitNow
#SummitNow

21. Overview
• Introducing portals
• Developing standard portlets
• Implementing portlets
• Alfresco Web Services API
• Spring WebScripts
• OpenCMIS
• Spring Surf
#SummitNow
#SummitNow

22. Developing standard portlets
A quick tour about how to implement
standard portlets
#SummitNow
#SummitNow

23. Developing standard portlets
You can use the GenericPortlet abstract
class for overriding the following methods:
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
processAction
doView
doEdit
doHelp
doHeaders
init
destroy
#SummitNow
#SummitNow

24. Standard portlets – Demo
#SummitNow
#SummitNow

25. Overview
• Introducing portals
• Developing standard portlets
• Implementing portlets
• Alfresco Web Services API
• Spring WebScripts
• OpenCMIS
• Spring Surf
#SummitNow
#SummitNow

26. Portlets with Alfresco WS API
A quick tour about how to implement portlets
invoking Alfresco with Web Services API
(SOAP)
#SummitNow
#SummitNow

27. Web Services API - Services
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Authentication: login and logout
Repository: query and model manipulation
Content: content manipulation
Authoring: collaborative content creation
Classification: apply classifications and categories
Access Control: roles, permissions & ownership
Action: manages actions and rules
Administration: user management, export & import
Dictionary: model descriptions
#SummitNow
#SummitNow

28. Content Manipulation Language
#SummitNow
#SummitNow

29. Web Services API - Search
The only query language supported is Lucene
Notice that use have to use the RepositoryService to search contents:
there is no SearchService -> Query method
#SummitNow
#SummitNow

30. Search portlet – iterating results
#SummitNow
#SummitNow

31. Search portlet
#SummitNow
#SummitNow

32. Overview
• Introducing portals
• Developing standard portlets
• Implementing portlets
• Alfresco Web Services API
• Spring WebScripts
• OpenCMIS
• Spring Surf
#SummitNow
#SummitNow

33. Portlets with Spring WebScripts
A quick tour about how to implement portlets
exposing your WebScripts in the portlet
descriptor of Alfresco
#SummitNow
#SummitNow

34. Spring WebScripts
Alfresco Web Scripts use
a lightweight Model View
Controller (MVC) style
framework.
#SummitNow
#SummitNow

35. Components of a WebScript
There are 3 main components of a web script:
• Descriptor
• Controller (optional if exists an FTL template)
• JavaScript server side (Mozilla Rhino)
• Subgroup of the Java API
• You can extend it!!!
• Template
• FTL (optional if request and response are managed
by Java)
• Java Action (AbstractWebScript)
#SummitNow
#SummitNow

36. WebScript Descriptor
The descriptor file uses the following naming convention
which provides additional information to Alfresco:
helloworld.get.desc.xml
The content of the descriptor file:
#SummitNow
#SummitNow

37. WebScript Controller
The controller script is an optional component
written in JavaScript or Java, which does the
actual work.
#SummitNow
#SummitNow

38. WebScript Template
The WebScript template is the output template for
displaying the content to user agents or
applications.
The output format can be based on many formats:
• HTML
• ATOM
• XML
• RSS
#SummitNow
#SummitNow

39. WebScriptPortlet
Wrapper for exposing a WebScript as a portlet, you need to
set these two parameters:
• scriptUrl
• The URL exposed by the involved WebScript
• Authenticator factory
• jsr168.webclient
• Based on cookie
• Jsr168
• Based on the portal session
#SummitNow
#SummitNow

40. WebScriptPortlet - Descriptor
#SummitNow
#SummitNow

41. WebScriptPortlet – Search
The search object is exposed for executing queries:
For XPath expression use ISO9075 to encode paths
var luceneQuery =
“PATH:”/app:company_home/cm:”+search.ISO9075(“Books
tore orders”)+”/*””;
var ordersResults =
search.luceneSearch(luceneQuery);
model.results = ordersResults;
#SummitNow
#SummitNow

42. WebScriptPortlet – Get details
var id = args.id;
if(id!=null && id!=“”){
var node = utils.getNodeFromString(id);
model.node = node;
} else {
status.code = 400;
status.message = “id must be not null";
status.redirect = true;
}
#SummitNow
#SummitNow

43. WebScriptPortlet – Demo
#SummitNow
#SummitNow

44. Overview
• Introducing portals
• Developing standard portlets
• Implementing portlets
• Alfresco Web Services API
• Spring WebScripts
• OpenCMIS
• Spring Surf
#SummitNow
#SummitNow

45. Portlets with OpenCMIS
A quick tour about how to implement portlets
using OpenCMIS
#SummitNow
#SummitNow

46. CMIS – Domain Model
Data Model
Repository
Object
CMIS Query
Associated services
Common elements
Repository services
Navigation services
Object Services
Multi-filing services
Discovery, versioning, relationship, policy and ACL services
#SummitNow
#SummitNow

47. OpenCMIS – Repository
• Contains set of data entities
• getRepositories() for given endpoint
• get repository capabilities
#SummitNow
#SummitNow

48. OpenCMIS – Object
• Used to model typed
objects
• Four base types:
• Document Object
• Folder Object
• Relationship object
• Policy object
• Object ID
• Object properties
• Version, ACL
• Content Stream
• Renditions
#SummitNow
#SummitNow

49. OpenCMIS – Services
Repository services: used to discover information about the
repository
Navigation services: used to traverse the CMIS repository folder
hierarchy
Objects services: used to manipulate the repository contents with a
CRUD interface
Discovery services: used to search for query-able objects within
repository
#SummitNow
#SummitNow

50. OpenCMIS Client API
• Client-side Java library that implements the
CMIS specification
• object-oriented way
• AtomPub or SOAP protocols
• Binding selected with getRepositories()
method on SessionFactory object
#SummitNow
#SummitNow

51. OpenCMIS Client API AtomPub
//AtomPub binding
// default factory implementation
SessionFactory factory = SessionFactoryImpl.newInstance();
Map<String, String> parameter = new HashMap<String, String>();
// user credentials
parameter.put(SessionParameter.USER, "admin");
parameter.put(SessionParameter.PASSWORD, "admin");
// connection settings
parameter.put(SessionParameter.BINDING_TYPE, BindingType.ATOMPUB.value());
parameter.put(SessionParameter. ATOMPUB_URL,
"http://cmis.alfresco.com/cmisatom");
parameter.put(SessionParameter.REPOSITORY_ID,
"84ccfe80-b325-4d79-ab4d-080a4bdd045b")
// create session
Session session = factory.createSession(parameter);
#SummitNow
#SummitNow

52. OpenCMIS Client API - Search
String myType = "my:documentType";
// get the query name of cmis:objectId
ObjectType type = session.getTypeDefinition(myType);
PropertyDefinition<?> objectIdPropDef =
type.getPropertyDefinitions().get(PropertyIds.OBJECT_ID);
String objectIdQueryName = objectIdPropDef.getQueryName();
String queryString = "SELECT " + objectIdQueryName + " FROM " + type.getQueryName();
// execute query
ItemIterable<QueryResult> results = session.query(queryString, false);
for (QueryResult qResult : results) {
String objectId = qResult.getPropertyValueByQueryName(objectIdQueryName);
Document doc = (Document) session.getObject(session.createObjectId(objectId));
}
#SummitNow
#SummitNow

53. OpenCMIS - Demo
#SummitNow
#SummitNow

54. Overview
• Introducing portals
• Developing standard portlets
• Implementing portlets
• Alfresco Web Services API
• Spring WebScripts
• OpenCMIS
• Spring Surf
#SummitNow
#SummitNow

55. Portlets with Spring Surf
A quick tour about how to implement portlets
exposing your Surf components
#SummitNow
#SummitNow

56. Spring Surf
• MVC framework
• Scriptable
• RESTful
• Page-centric
• Page
• Components
• Embeds Spring WebScripts
#SummitNow
#SummitNow

57. Spring Surf – Process loading
#SummitNow
#SummitNow

58. Spring Surf – Regions
#SummitNow
#SummitNow

59. ProxyPortlet
• Allows to expose as a portlet any bits of Share
• scriptUrl
• Page
• Component / WebScript
• Each WebScript inside Share is a Presentation
WebScript that needs to invoke against the
repo:
• a Data WebScript
• CMIS AtomPub binding
#SummitNow
#SummitNow

60. ProxyPortlet – How it works
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
The portal starts to render the portlet page
Share starts to render the Surf page (only 1 component)
Share starts to render the component
Share invokes Alfresco using REST calls
Share connector get the user session from
request.getRemoteUser() and set the user as authenticated in
Alfresco (external authentication)
Alfresco executes the WebScripts
The returned JSON will be parsed by Share to render the FTL
template for the portlet
Share ends to render the Surf page
The portal finishes to render the portlet
#SummitNow
#SummitNow

61. ProxyPortlet – Search
#SummitNow
#SummitNow

62. Thank you
@pjlucidi
p.lucidi@sourcesense.com
#SummitNow
#SummitNow

63. #SummitNow