The document provides an overview of how to create tools for the iSites content management system at Harvard University. It discusses the basic architecture of how iSites works and interacts with external tools, how to create views and handle forms, and various other tips and considerations for iSites tool development. The document is intended to help developers understand the iSites ecosystem and get started building new iSites tools.

1. Creating a New iSites Tool Getting Past Hello [ iSites ] Bobbi Fox, Office for Information Systems Harvard University Library abcd-www 11 August 2010

2. I Built A Really Neat Widget Generator… http://hul.harvard.edu/ois/systems/webservices/widgets/xsearch_wizard.html

6. What Wasn’t A Surprise You don’t get to control All images on this page by Turnvater Jahn used under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike license. the Vertical the Horizontal

10. Diagram courtesy of David Heitmeyer of iCommons How iSites Works

14. Creating Views Diagram courtesy of David Heitmeyer of iCommons

18. Params in the URL request Param Name Description userid Encrypted with RC4 encryption, needs “shared key” keyword iSites keyword for the site siteId siteType 12 == Standard, 10 == my.harvard topicId Topic Box (Instantiation) ID coreToolId ID of your tool – assigned by iCommons urlRoot The URL root of the page remoteAddr IP of the requesting browser permissions Permissions for that user pageContentId pageid context See next several slides… state “ edit”, “view”…

28. The Form Submit Process Diagram courtesy of David Heitmeyer of iCommons

29. My Initial iSites Prototype:

30. Unbeknownst To Me… … There already was a non-editable Library Search widget on iSites…

38. Putting It All Together (cont’d again)…