Alfresco from an agile framework perspective

Alfresco from an agile framework
perspective
Jeff Potts
jpotts@metaversant.com

© Copyright 2010, Metaversant Group, Inc. | http://www.metaversant.com
Agenda
• Patterns of Alfresco Customization
• A Tale of Two Frameworks: Surf vs. Django
• Heavy Share Customization: A real-world example
• Conclusions & Advice

PATTERNS OF ALFRESCO
CUSTOMIZATION

Custom Alfresco Patterns
• Non-Alfresco framework on
top of Alfresco
• Surf on top of Alfresco
• Light Share Customizations
• Heavy Share Customizations
• Patterns we aren’t going to talk
about:
– Explorer client customizations
– Portal integration
– Embedded Alfresco
Source: thomas hawk

Non-Alfresco Framework
Source: Optaros
+

Surf on Alfresco
Source: Optaros

Light Share Customizations

Heavy Share Customizations

Surf or Something Else?
• Share is a popular, extensible
client with a great UI
• When Share is too much or too
far from your business
requirements…
– Which framework on top of
Alfresco?
– An experiment…
Source: irargerich

A word on agile frameworks
• Agile frameworks and scripting languages are
very popular
• Examples: Rails, Grails, Django, Wicket,
Symfony, Cake, etc.
• Productive, fast dev cycles
• Built-in Bootstrapping, ORM, MVC,
tests/fixtures, administrative UI’s
• Hundreds available across every
language imaginable
• Can be trendy, like frozen yogurt
Source: mswine

Common requirements
• Let content authors create "chunks" and upload
files
• Chunks and files get tagged and categorized
• Not all objects have files--the UI can't freak out
when it comes across "content-less" objects
• Front-end web site needs to be able to query for
chunks, files, and content-less objects
• The front-end web site cannot look like Share
– Our users aren't teams
– They don't care about “document libraries”

A simple example: To Do
• Basic requirements
– End users create/manage to do list items
– To do list items are tagged
– End users can upload documents related to To Do’s
• Extended requirements
– Certain categories of To Do Lists have associated
content chunks that need to be displayed.
• Example: To do list that is categorized as "Writing"
should display with content chunks that give advice
on writing.
– Groupings of To Do lists
• Friends/Co-workers
• Projects, etc.
– RSS feeds

Approaches
• To Do’s, Users, and Files are objects.
• I’ll map URLs to various views on those
objects.
• I’ll probably use a relational database to
persist everything except the files, which I’ll
let my framework handle.
• Files are documents. That’s easy.
• To Do’s are “content-less” objects.
• I need to figure out a folder for all of this
stuff to live in and how I want to relate To
Do’s to files.
• I’ll map URLs to various views which will
request data from the repository via REST.

Five-minute look at Django
• Creating a new Django app
• Defining a content model
• Creating a template
• Model View Controller
• Using the admin site to edit
object instances
Source: William Gottlieb
Fun Django Facts:
•Started as an internal project in 2003 at the Journal-World
newspaper (Lawrence, KS)
•Named after jazz guitarist, Django Reinhardt
•The Onion recently migrated to Django from Drupal
Fun Django Facts:
•Started as an internal project in 2003 at the Journal-World
newspaper (Lawrence, KS)
•Named after jazz guitarist, Django Reinhardt
•The Onion recently migrated to Django from Drupal

Model
from django.db import models
from django.contrib.auth.models import User
from datetime import date, datetime
class ToDoItem(models.Model):
title = models.CharField(max_length=200)
dueDate = models.DateField(default=date.today())
priority = models.IntegerField(default=3)
status = models.TextField()
notes = models.TextField()
createdDate = models.DateTimeField(default=datetime.today())
creator = models.ForeignKey(User, related_name='todo_creator')
assignee = models.ForeignKey(User, null=True, blank=True,
related_name='todo_assignee')
#attachments = Document # Array of CMIS documents
def __unicode__(self):
return self.title
class Tag(models.Model):
name = models.CharField(max_length=64, unique=True)
toDoItems = models.ManyToManyField(ToDoItem)
return self.name
from django.db import models
from django.contrib.auth.models import User
from datetime import date, datetime
class ToDoItem(models.Model):
title = models.CharField(max_length=200)
dueDate = models.DateField(default=date.today())
priority = models.IntegerField(default=3)
status = models.TextField()
notes = models.TextField()
createdDate = models.DateTimeField(default=datetime.today())
creator = models.ForeignKey(User, related_name='todo_creator')
assignee = models.ForeignKey(User, null=True, blank=True,
related_name='todo_assignee')
#attachments = Document # Array of CMIS documents
return self.title
class Tag(models.Model):
name = models.CharField(max_length=64, unique=True)
toDoItems = models.ManyToManyField(ToDoItem)
return self.name
models.py

URLs map to Views
urlpatterns = patterns('',
(r'âdmin/', include(admin.site.urls)),
(r'^$', main_page),
(r'ûser/(w+)/$', user_page),
(r'^login/$',
'django.contrib.auth.views.login'),
(r'^logout/$', logout_page),
(r'^register/$', register_page),
(r'^register/success/$', direct_to_template,
{'template':
'registration/register_success.html'}),
(r'^create/$', todo_create_page),
(r'^save/(d+)/$', todo_save_page),
(r'^site_media/(?P<path>.*)$',
'django.views.static.serve', {'document_root':
site_media}),
(r'^tag/([^s]+)/$', tag_page),
(r'^tag/$', tag_cloud_page),
)
urlpatterns = patterns('',
(r'âdmin/', include(admin.site.urls)),
(r'^$', main_page),
(r'ûser/(w+)/$', user_page),
(r'^login/$',
'django.contrib.auth.views.login'),
(r'^logout/$', logout_page),
(r'^register/$', register_page),
(r'^register/success/$', direct_to_template,
{'template':
'registration/register_success.html'}),
(r'^create/$', todo_create_page),
(r'^save/(d+)/$', todo_save_page),
(r'^site_media/(?P<path>.*)$',
'django.views.static.serve', {'document_root':
site_media}),
(r'^tag/([^s]+)/$', tag_page),
(r'^tag/$', tag_cloud_page),
)
settings.py
def user_page(request, username):
user = get_object_or_404(User,
username=username)
todos = user.todo_assignee.order_by('-id')
variables = RequestContext(request, {
'username': username,
'todos': todos,
'show_tags': True,
'show_assignee': False,
'show_creator': True,
'show_edit': username ==
request.user.username,
})
return render_to_response(
'user_page.html', variables
)
def user_page(request, username):
user = get_object_or_404(User,
username=username)
todos = user.todo_assignee.order_by('-id')
variables = RequestContext(request, {
'username': username,
'todos': todos,
'show_tags': True,
'show_assignee': False,
'show_creator': True,
'show_edit': username ==
request.user.username,
})
return render_to_response(
'user_page.html', variables
)
views.py

<html>
<head>
<title>Django To Do's | {% block title %}{% endblock %}</title>
<link rel="stylesheet" href="/site_media/style.css" type="text/css" />
</head>
<body>
<div id="nav">
<a href="/">home</a>
{% if user.is_authenticated %}
welcome, <a href="/user/{{ user.username }}/">{{ user.username }}</a>! |
<a href="/create/">new to do</a> |
<a href="/logout">logout</a>
{% else %}
<a href="/login/">login</a>
<a href="/register/">register</a>
{% endif %}
</div>
<h1>{% block head %}{% endblock %}</h1>
{% block content %}{% endblock %}
</body>
</html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Django To Do's | {% block title %}{% endblock %}</title>
<link rel="stylesheet" href="/site_media/style.css" type="text/css" />
</head>
<body>
<div id="nav">
<a href="/">home</a>
{% if user.is_authenticated %}
welcome, <a href="/user/{{ user.username }}/">{{ user.username }}</a>! |
<a href="/create/">new to do</a> |
<a href="/logout">logout</a>
{% else %}
<a href="/login/">login</a>
<a href="/register/">register</a>
{% endif %}
</div>
<h1>{% block head %}{% endblock %}</h1>
{% block content %}{% endblock %}
</body>
</html>
base.html
{% extends "base.html" %}
{% block title %}{{ username }}{% endblock %}
{% block head %}To Do's for {{ username }}{%
endblock %}
{% block content %}
{% include "todo_list.html" %}
{% endblock %}
{% extends "base.html" %}
{% block title %}{{ username }}{% endblock %}
{% block head %}To Do's for {{ username }}{%
endblock %}
{% block content %}
{% include "todo_list.html" %}
{% endblock %}
user_page.html {% if todos %}
<ul class="todos">
{% for todo in todos %}
<li>
<a href="/todo/{{ todo.id }}"
class="title">{{ todo.title }}</a>
{% if show_edit %}
…
{% if todos %}
<ul class="todos">
{% for todo in todos %}
<li>
<a href="/todo/{{ todo.id }}"
class="title">{{ todo.title }}</a>
{% if show_edit %}
…
todo_list.html
Template Inheritance

Alfresco approach
• Content Consumer UI
– Custom Surf pages/templates/components for the
"front-end" user interface
• Administrative UI
– Lightly-customized Alfresco Share
• Data Persistence
– Custom content model for properties, associations
(To Do data list happens to already exist)
– Document library for files and content chunks
– Data List objects for To Do items
– Rule on a folder to add taggable and classifiable
aspects to new objects

Alfresco approach
• Business Logic
– Share web scripts to generate UI and handle form
posts
– Repo web scripts to handle JSON POSTs that
create new data (file upload, new to do)
– Repo web scripts to handle GETs that retrieve
existing data (chunks for a given category, to do
list info)
– JavaScript for all web-tier and repo-tier web script
controllers (fast dev, cuts down on restarts)

Demo: A tale of two frameworks
• Share site
• Data list content model
• Surf pages & web
scripts (XML,
FreeMarker, JavaScript)
• Repository web scripts
(minimal)
• Surf config
– Alfresco user factory
• Share config (minimal)
• RDB back-end
– Schema managed
by Django
• Python classes
– Model
– Controllers (“Views”)
– Forms
• URL mapping
• Admin UI

Work Remaining
• Add file upload to both Django and Alfresco To Do’s
– Django has a File type
– Django supports custom File Managers (Hello,
CMIS!)
– Refactor django-alfresco to use CMIS; e.g.,
CmisDocument type
• Add “categorizable chunk” to both
• Search
• Friends list
Source: jphilipg

Comparison
• Both have decent tooling
– pydev for Django
– Eclipse/STS, Roo, Maven, Ant
for Alfresco
• Model, forms, query much easier
in Django
• “Learning where stuff goes”
– Much faster in Django
• Surf documentation is “still
evolving”
Source: TheBusyBrain
To Do Demo
App
Alfresco Django
Number of files 75 23Alfresco # of Files by Type
Django # of Files by Type

Comparison (cont’d)
• Gotchas
– Lack of query-able associations
in DM repo was painful
– Add user to Share site on user
registration post
– Create a rule on the data list
folder to set owner
– Keep track of assignee
add/remove
• Attempt to simplify actually
made Surf site harder
– Forms without JavaScript
– No pickers
– Not fully leveraging Alfresco’s
form service
Source: automania
To Do Demo Alfresco Django
Lines of Code 1,578 674
Alfresco LOC by Type
Django LOC by Type

A real-world example
• SaaS platform wants a community site with resources their
customers need to leverage the platform better
• Content chunks & files
• Discussion threads, blogs
• Everything tagged against multiple taxonomies
• Consumer UI
• Content Management / Admin UI

Architecture
Lightly
customized Share
Admin UI Consumer UI
Heavily
customized Share
•Content Model
•Behaviors
•Rules
•Web Scripts
•Theme
•YUI
•Form Service
•Web Scripts
Content Managers Community Users

Data Model
Global Share
Site
Client Share
Sites
Project
Share Sites
Users &
Groups
Client ID on cm:user
One group per client
Client Data List
Snippets & Resources
Categories
Categories for products,
topics, processes
Project Data List
Client Logos
Process State Data List
User-uploaded Content
Share Site HierarchyAdmin Data
Team Data List

Content Consumer UI

Content Chunks

File Resources

Administrative UI

Customization by the Numbers
t = 17,153 lines t = 6,552 lines
t = 192,925 lines t = 118,586 lines
Share LOC Share JS
Customization
LOC
Customization
JS

Conclusions & Advice
• Use JavaScript controllers
• Turn on Share client debug
• Develop on two Tomcats
• Don’t deploy to Share as a JAR
• Incorporate minification into your
build up-front
• Learn something about YUI,
JavaScript closures
• Extend, override, augment. Replace
as last resort
• Actions, Behaviors, & Form Filters
are your friends
Source: hiram_college
Helpful tools:
•curl
•Firebug
•Tamper Data
•www.jsonlint.com
•Rhino command-line
Helpful tools:
•curl
•Firebug
•Tamper Data
•www.jsonlint.com
•Rhino command-line

Get Involved!
• Apache Chemistry - http://incubator.apache.org/chemistry/
– OpenCMIS
– cmislib
– PHP CMIS Client
• Django Framework
– http://www.djangoproject.com/
– Django 1.0 Web Site Development (Packt), Ayman Hourieh
• django-alfresco on Google Code (non-CMIS)
– http://code.google.com/p/django-alfresco/
• Drupal CMIS Module
– http://drupal.org/project/cmis
• Spring Surf
– http://www.springsurf.org

THANK YOU!
Tweet me with questions/feedback @jeffpotts01
Get up to speed and stay informed
with Alfresco news, tips, & tutorials!

Alfresco from an agile framework perspective

Recommended

Recommended

More Related Content

What's hot

What's hot (20)

Viewers also liked

Viewers also liked (15)

Similar to Alfresco from an agile framework perspective

Similar to Alfresco from an agile framework perspective (20)

More from Jeff Potts

More from Jeff Potts (20)

Recently uploaded

Recently uploaded (20)

Alfresco from an agile framework perspective

Editor's Notes