Having released v0.2 of the Node Browser Component for Share this week and having put a bit of work into refactoring the underlying code, it seemed like a good time to write a quick guide to creating Administration Console Components for Share.
Like dashlets, Admin Console components are easily defined using a single web script, along with some supporting resources, and are therefore are automatically picked up by the framework once added to Share, with no additional configuration needed.
Alfresco’s Engineering team have added a number of new console components to the upcoming Swift release, and in addition to the Node Browser Share Extras provides two other additional components that you can add to your existing 3.3 or 3.4 installations.

• Complenting the Node Browser, Florian Maul’s JavaScript Console allows custom JavaScript code to be executed against the repository to display information or make changes. Loading and saving of scripts to and from the Data Dictionary is supported, as well as syntax highlighting and custom space contexts.
• Secondly the Create Bulk Users component allows administrators to create multiple users in the repository, based on CSV/TSV or JSON data, and is capable of auto-generating usernames and passwords, sending email notifications and logging of all user created.

Each of the three add-on pages has information on checking out a copy of the source code, which you can use as a basis for creating your own components. You should also grab a copy of the Sample Project bundle, which can be used as a template for your projects.
But before you dive into the code, it’s useful to have an understanding of the different parts that make up a component. So let’s step through each of them in turn, using the Create Bulk Users component as an example.
1. Web-tier web script
Technically, this is the only required part of the component. The component is bound into the application via this web script, which must be declared as a member of the admin-console family within its .desc.xml file. It should also define a single, unique URL, have a unique path and provide a HTML template to render the component’s UI.
The following XML is from the descriptor file (create-users.get.desc.xml) for the Create Bulk Users component, which should illustrate this.

<webscript>
   <shortname>Admin Console Create Users</shortname>
   <description>Administration Console - Create Users Console</description>
   <url>/extras/components/console/create-users</url>
   <family>admin-console</family>
</webscript>

Although it’s obviously possible to provide a JavaScript controller for the web script, it’s normally not necessary if you’re using a client-side module to encapsulate your business logic, as we’ll explore in the next section.
A HTML template (create-users.get.html.ftl in this example) is responsible for laying out out the basic skeleton mark-up of the component, including instantiation of any client-side modules being used.
Although technically optional you will normally also need a corresponding .head.ftl template (create-users.get.head.ftl in this example) to include your own basic, custom CSS file as well as any client-side JavaScript files the component requires.
You can see these templates and all other files that make up this web script in the Create Bulk Users source code under config/alfresco/site-webscripts.
2. Client-side component
It’s recommended that you use a client-side component for all but the most basic console components, since it will allow you to handle interactions with the user using standard script-based controls and widgets, and in a manner consistent with other admin console components.
Like dashlets that utilise client-side code, your client-side component will normally be defined in a dedicated .js file, which should be part of the static files (in addition to your CSS) supplied with your component.
The component should be defined using the standard Share pattern

1. Components are JavaScript classes, defined within a specific namespace, which can be instantiated in page components when needed
2. Components declare a constructor, then extend a base class using YAHOO.extend() and add their own class methods
3. Component definitions are contained within a function closure

But whereas dashlet classes would typically extend Alfresco.component.Base, admin console components extend Alfresco.ConsoleTool, which adds some additional fields and methods to support multiple panels and the YUI History Manager.
The component constructor is also slightly more complex than for a dashlet component, since to support the panel approach it is necessary to define within the constructor at least one inner panel class, plus an instantiation of each class.
Panels provide different views of a console component, and whereas simple components such as the Create Bulk Users Console have only one panel, it allows more complex components such as the Node Browser to define more than one (in this case one for the search panel and another for the node view panel).
Like the main component, the pattern used to define the panel class is the constuctor + YUI.extend() method, with panels extending the base class Alfresco.ConsolePanelHandler.
Although this might seem complex, once understood, it provides a consistent pattern which can be applied again and again to define as many admin console components as you need.
So wrapping all of this up, the general pattern for admin console client-side components is something like the following, as illustrated for the Create Bulk Users component.

// Ensure Extras namespace exists
if (typeof Extras == "undefined" || !Extras)
{
   var Extras = {};
}
(function() // Function closure
{
   ...
   Extras.ConsoleCreateUsers = function(htmlId) // Component constructor
   {
      ...
      FormPanelHandler = function FormPanelHandler_constructor() // Form panel constructor
      {
         FormPanelHandler.superclass.constructor.call(this, "form");
      };
      YAHOO.extend(FormPanelHandler, Alfresco.ConsolePanelHandler, // Extend Alfresco.ConsolePanelHandler
      {
         onLoad: function onLoad() // Fired on initial panel load
         {
            ...
         }
         ...
      });
      new FormPanelHandler(); // Instantiate panel instance
      return this;
   };
   ...
   YAHOO.extend(Extras.ConsoleCreateUsers, Alfresco.ConsoleTool,
   {
      options: // Console component configurable options
      {
         ...
      },
      onReady: function ConsoleCreateUsers_onReady() // Fired when component ready
      {
         ...
      },
      ...
   });
})(); // End function closure

Much of the code is stripped out here to convey the overall structure. In reality you would have other statements mixed in with the functions above, and all public classes, constructors and methods should be documented with appropriate JSDoc.
To explorer this some more, it’s recommended that you take a look at the client-side JavaScript files inside the JavaScript Console and Create Bulk User Console add-ons. You will find these files in the checked-out source code under the directory source/web.
3. Web-tier Spring configuration and message bundle
Most of the strings that appear in the admin console component UI should be externalised in your web script .properties file, and will be accessible from the Freemarker template of the web script via the root-scoped msg() function.
However, the name of your component also appears in the component list on the left hand side of the Admin Console, and since the page component responsible for rendering this does not have access the messages defined in your web script, it is necessary to provide a globally-scoped message bundle to provide some text for a label and a description of our component.
You can define your message bundle in any valid .properties file, but for the sake of convention I normally give mine a unique name and place them in the package alfresco/messages in my configuration. This is the file used for the Create Bulk Users component, which you can find in the source code under config/alfresco/messages/create-bulk-users.properties.

tool.create-users.label=Create Bulk Users
tool.create-users.description=Create repository users from CSV or JSON data

The message names should comply with this standard structure, with the part between the periods (.) being the same as the name of the console component’s web script, minus the method part. Since the name of the web script was create-users.get, the message names required are tool.create-users.label are and tool.create-users.description.
Lastly, a small piece of Spring configuration is needed to bind the message bundle into the application. This file must have a unique name with the suffix -context.xml, and be placed within the package org/springframework/extensions/surf. See the file config/org/springframework/extensions/create-bulk-users-context.xml in the Create Bulk Users source code for an example.
4. Repository components
Lastly, it’s likely that your admin console component will require some custom repository logic to perform your administration tasks. Normally this would take the form of one or more repository-tier web scripts, but other components such as a custom data model could also be required.
Fortunately the source directory structure used by the Sample Project in Share Extras (and by the three admin console add-ons) allows these to be placed in the same project, and you will find the repository web script create-users.post used by the Create Bulk Users component in the source code under config/alfresco/templates/webscripts.
Summary
You should now have an idea of the basic parts involved in an admin console components such as the three examples provided by Share Extras, and how they interact with each other.
You can study these examples to help you gain further understanding of how each of the four parts are implemented in practice, by checking out the source code for them. The JavaScript Console and Create Bulk Users examples are the simplest, so start there and look at the Node Browser if you need a multi-panel example.
The Sample Project provides a good skeleton project for you to define your own add-ons. Although the example code provided in it implements a web script, you can easily delete these and add your own files to define an admin console component, based on one of the three examples.
As well as giving you a basic directory structure, the project also gives you an Ant build script that you can use to build, test and distribute your add-on.
If you have any feedback, please leave a comment below.