BP207 - Easy as pie creating widgets for ibm connections

Legal disclaimer© IBM Corporation 2012. All Rights Reserved. The information contained in this publication is provided for informational purposes only. While efforts were made to verify the completeness and accuracy of the information contained in this publication, it is provided AS IS without warranty of any kind, express or implied. In addition, this information is based on IBM’s current product plans and strategy, which are subject to change by IBM without notice. IBM shall not be responsible for any damages arising out of the use of, or otherwise related to, this publication or any other materials. Nothing contained in this publication is intended to, nor shall have the effect of, creating any warranties or representations from IBM or its suppliers or licensors, or altering the terms and conditions of the applicable license agreement governing the use of IBM software. References in this presentation to IBM products, programs, or services do not imply that they will be available in all countries in which IBM operates. Product release dates and/or capabilities referenced in this presentation may change at any time at IBM’s sole discretion based on market opportunities or other factors, and are not intended to be a commitment to future product or feature availability in any way. Nothing contained in these materials is intended to, nor shall have the effect of, stating or implying that any activities undertaken by you will result in any specific sales, revenue growth or other results. Notes, Domino, Quickr, Sametime, WebSphere, UC2, PartnerWorld and Lotusphere are trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation in the United States, other countries, or both. Unyte is a trademark of WebDialogs, Inc., in the United States, other countries, or both. 2 | © 2012 IBM Corporation

About me With IntraVision (makers of the OnTime® suite of calendar and meeting management products – showcase booth 515), Premier Business Partner from Denmark Been working with IBM Lotus® technologies since he was a young boy Recently named an IBM Champion for IBM Collaboration Solutions (ICS) An all together nice guy! http://twitter.com/lekkim http://lekkimworld.com 3 | © 2012 IBM Corporation

Agenda A bit on IBM Connections architecture and the infrastructure for widgets i.e. configuration files etc. Introduction to iWidgets – configure, develop and deploy Resources and summary Q&A 4 | © 2012 IBM Corporation

Widgets in IBM Connections Most functionality in IBM Connections is actually widgets You may add widgets in Profiles, Communities and Homepage Widgets are made up of two parts ─ Widget configuration on the IBM Connections server ─ The actual widget written to the iWidget specification (JavaScript / XML / HTML / CSS) 6 | © 2012 IBM Corporation

Widgets in IBM Connections You may add widgets in Profiles, Communities and Homepage Most functionality in these features is actually widgets Widgets are made up of two parts ─ Widget configuration on the IBM Connections server ─ The actual widget written to the iWidget specification (JavaScript / XML / CSS) 7 | © 2012 IBM Corporation

Widget modes  There are a number of modes defined (view, edit, fullpage, search) but not all modes are supported in all features (fullpage and search only in Communities)  Widgets may contribute multiple modes  Administrator may choose to use some and not all modes contributedAdded by the community Added by administrator owner View mode 8 | © 2012 IBM Corporation

Widget modes There are a number of modes defined (view, edit, fullpage, search) but not all modes are supported in all features (fullpage and search only in Communities) Widgets may contribute multiple modes Administrator may choose to use some and not all modes contributed Fullpage mode 9 | © 2012 IBM Corporation

Widget modes There are a number of modes defined (view, edit, fullpage, search) but not all modes are supported in all features (fullpage and search only in Communities) Widgets may contribute multiple modes Administrator may choose to use some and not all modes contributed Search mode 10 | © 2012 IBM Corporation

Widget attributes makes the widget configurable It doesnt make sense to hard code or at least not supply sensible defaults and widget attributes can be used for configuration String key/value pairs may be supplied – interpretation of the value is up to the widget though Some values cannot be specified in widgets-config.xml as they may change based on IBM Connections configuration (such as context root i.e. “/dogear” / “/bookmarks”) or the ID of the active profile / community Special values are enclosed in curly braces – i.e. ─ {resourceId} profileKey of current Profiles user or communityUnid if in Communities ─ {contextRoot} Context root of the current feature (i.e. “/profiles”) 12 | © 2012 IBM Corporation

Say hello to iWidgets In IBM Connections 3 the widgets are iWidgets which means that they are written to the iWidget specification Widgets are described by a widget descriptor (referenced in widgets-config.xml) and optionally JavaScript to provide dynamic behavior and, also optionally, CSS to style the contents The widget descriptor describes supported modes, startup mode, “iScope class” (more in a bit) and, optionally, which resources to load Static widget content for each mode may also be supplied 14 | © 2012 IBM Corporation

iContext An iContext instance is automatically set into the iScope class The iContext provides access to the widget markup (e.g. root element), I/O related functions (i.e. URL rewriting), widget attributes etc. The iContext is easily accessed from the iScope class using this.iContext Important functions include: ─ iContext.getRootElement() : DOM Element ─ iContext.getElementById(id:string) : DOM Element ─ iContext.getiWidgetAttributes() : ItemSet ─ iContext.getUserProfile() : ItemSet ─ iContext.io.rewriteURI(uri:string) : string ─ iContext.iEvents.fireEvent(name:string, type:string, payload:object) You retrieve information from an ItemSet using getItemValue(name:string) 22 | © 2012 IBM Corporation

Keeping context JavaScript is single threaded - all requests for web resources are done after the current method completes The callback is done with another context i.e. “this” will refer to something else than your iScope class Solution is to ─ use closures i.e. save a reference to “this” before the call ─ use dojo.hitch and have dojo apply the correct context 25 | © 2012 IBM Corporation

Whats your origin? In browsers we have whats called the “Same Origin Policy” JavaScript running the the browser may only do XHRs against the same server it was loaded from Same server means ─ Same hostname / IP ─ Same port number To work around this we use an AJAX proxy IBM Connections supplies us with a proxy which is easy to use from your widget code 28 | © 2012 IBM Corporation

Using the AJAX proxyIf running in Profiles the proxy will be http://<host>/profiles/ajaxProxyAbove request will be http://<host>/profiles/ajaxProxy/http/www.google.com/search?q=Lotusphere 29 | © 2012 IBM Corporation

IBM Connections AJAX proxy is used for all requests Easy to see if using Firebug to trace AJAX proxy used for all requests even though widget descriptor and required JavaScript files are fully qualified and from same hostname / port combination 30 | © 2012 IBM Corporation

Proxy security For security access through the proxy is disallowed by default You have to allow access on a per hostname and method type (GET, POST, DELETE etc.) basis (or open for all hostnames / methods although not recommended) Do remember to allow access for LtpaToken cookies if authentication should be propagated (unless using extreme care) Proxy configuration done in proxy-config.tpl on the IBM Connections server 31 | © 2012 IBM Corporation

Using Connections provide a very comprehensive REST API based on the IBM the IBM Connections REST API AtomPub standard Each feature has full documentation on how to access data using the API in the InfoCenter / wiki – unfortunately examples are hard to come by Since these requests probably go to the IBM Connections server they may not need to be proxied (unless features are on separate servers) ─ Remember to always use widget attributes (e.g. {profilesSvcRef}) to get URL to the Profiles feature unless you are willing to guess / hardcode Using the lconn.core.xpath and lconn.core.xslt classes can help you work with the XML based results ─ Loaded by default by the IBM Connections pages ─ Probably not supported neither officially or unofficially... :-) Most important functions: ─ lconn.core.xpath.selectNodes(xpath:string, xmldoc:XMLDocument, ns:array) : Nodelist ─ lconn.core.xslt.loadXml(url:string) : XMLDocument 32 | © 2012 IBM Corporation

Widget title, i18n and resources Unfortunately setting the title of your widget isnt as easy as one could have hoped :-( Setting the title can be done in one of two ways (well three actually): 1) Using general IBM Connections strings properties file – this one is easy and only require creating / changing one file 2) Using custom properties file – this one is clean as you dont depend on others files but it does also require change to LotusConnections- config.xml● Title is set as the value for a property where the key is the widget id from widgets-config.xml● String resources – e.g. translation – can be done using same approach OnTime=Calendar by OnTime 34 | © 2012 IBM Corporation

Caveats Editing configuration files by hand is prone to error ─ IBM would tell you always use checkin/checkout via wsadmin as it does a schema check :-) Widgets are running in a shared environment ─ Make sure your CSS classes do not clash ─ Make sure IDs are unique by prefixing something unique to them as there may be multiple instances of the same widget on the page (it follows from this that you cannot use IDs for CSS selectors) Because you have access to the entire page doesnt mean that you should... Never, never, never, never ever add something like the following to your stylesheet – you may need it but the page as a whole will start to look funny... * {font-size: 7pt; color: red; overflow: hidden} Start small... 37 | © 2012 IBM Corporation

Things I would have hoped someone had told me... Dojo is nasty to troubleshoot due to async loading – all errors seem to come from dojo.js which is almost never the culprit Logging is really your friend but do add something that indicates which piece of code is logging ─ console.log, console.trace, console.debug, console.info, console.warn, console.error How to show a lightbox 38 | © 2012 IBM Corporation

Things I would have hoped someone had told me... Dojo is nasty to troubleshoot due to async loading – all errors seem to come from dojo.js which is almost never the culprit Logging is really your friend but do add something that indicates which piece of code is logging ─ console.log, console.trace, console.debug, console.info, console.warn, console.error How to show a lightbox 39 | © 2012 IBM Corporation

Things I would have hoped someone had told me... Network latency kills web application performance – cache as such as possible and combine multiple files into one minified version Repeat after me: “Latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency..... 40 | © 2012 IBM Corporation

Summary Most functionality in IBM Connections is actually widgets and you can add your own Bringing your applications into IBM Connections and thus providing in-context access is very valuable Widgets are quite easy to develop using JavaScript and CSS although you must know about asynchronous JavaScript Dojo makes it easy to keep context and its already loaded iWidgets, iScope, iContext, iEvents... Use asynchronous calls to keep UI snappy and use dojo.hitch to keep context Start small and build from there Happy coding!! 41 | © 2012 IBM Corporation

Related sessions BP121: Performance Programming AD201: Integrate and Customize IBM Connections 3.0.1 AD203: Developing Custom Client Applications using the IBM Connections APIs AD204: Mastering the Art of Social Application Development 42 | © 2012 IBM Corporation

Resources iWidget specification: http://www-10.lotus.com/ldd/mashupswiki.nsf/dx/iwidget- spec-v1.0.pdf/$file/iwidget-spec-v1.0.pdf IBM Connections iWidget Development Guide: www- 10.lotus.com/ldd/lcwiki.nsf/dx/development-guide iWidget support in Homepage: http://www- 10.lotus.com/ldd/lcwiki.nsf/dx/07072009105437%D8%B5WEBKH7.htm iWidget support in profiles and Communities: http://www- 10.lotus.com/ldd/lcwiki.nsf/dx/10082009050455WEBCNM.htm Common iWidget support in Connections: http://www- 10.lotus.com/ldd/lcwiki.nsf/dx/common-iwidget-support-in-the-lotusconnections-features In all modesty my blog – http://lekkimworld.com 44 | © 2012 IBM Corporation

Q&A But?, How?, Doesnt that mean... Give it to me! (or come talk to me after the session or find me in the hallways...) Twitter: @lekkim Email: mh@intravision.dk Blog: http://lekkimworld.com Slides will be at http://lekkimworld.com/lotusphere2012 45 | © 2012 IBM Corporation

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BP207 - Easy as pie creating widgets for ibm connections

by Mikkel Flindt Heisterberg on Feb 06, 2012

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BP207 - Easy as pie creating widgets for ibm connections — Presentation Transcript