Visualising Geotagged Content with Google Maps

Posted on February 28, 2011 by wabson

Following Steve Reiner’s Twitter post last week, I was inspired over the weekend to add a similar Google Maps-based dashlet to share-extras, to show the locations of geotagged content items on a map view.
Since the repository has full support for extracting geographic data using Tika in version 3.4, all I needed to do to assemble some test content was upload a few photos taken on my phone into the site Document Library.
If you look at the Document Details page of a geotagged photo, you’ll see that this displays a latitude and longitude value at the end of the item’s properties list. These are part of a new aspect named Geographic.

Latitude and Longitude

Using Firebug’s Net console, I noticed that the JSON data for the document list view makes these values available on a new geographic property placed on each list item.

Firebug's Net Console

So to keep things simple the initial version of the dashlet simply re-used the doclist web script to grab a list of all content items in the root of the document library space, but the final version now on share-extras comes bundled with a dedicated webscript to list all items in the site that have the Geographic aspect applied.
Using this data, the dashlet displays a marker for each geotagged item, auto-centering itself on the centre point of all the items.

Clicking on a marker takes you to the Document Details page for that item. In the next update I’ll look at displaying a snippet of information for the item, which the Google Maps API makes pretty easy.

Adding dates in alfresco.log

Posted on July 20, 2010 by wabson

By default, Alfresco’s log4j configuration specifies that only the current system time, and no date, are output as the first entry in log messages output in alfresco.log, producing output such as the following.
12:21:23,658 INFO [org.alfresco.config.JndiPropertiesFactoryBean] Loading properties file from URL [file:/home/wabson/Downloads/alfresco-enterprise-tomcat-3.3.1/tomcat/shared/classes/alfresco-global.properties] 12:21:24,009 INFO [org.alfresco.config.JndiPropertyPlaceholderConfigurer] Loading properties file from class path resource [alfresco/alfresco-shared.properties] 12:22:40,726 INFO [org.springframework.extensions.webscripts.TemplateProcessorRegistry] Registered template processor Repository Template Processor for extension ftl 12:22:40,747 INFO [org.springframework.extensions.webscripts.ScriptProcessorRegistry] Registered script processor Repository Script Processor for extension js 12:23:09,470 INFO [org.alfresco.repo.domain.schema.SchemaBootstrap] Schema managed by database dialect org.hibernate.dialect.MySQLInnoDBDialect. 12:23:11,774 INFO [org.alfresco.repo.domain.schema.SchemaBootstrap] No changes were made to the schema.
This is the line responsible for setting the configuration in log4j.properties (found in the root of the classpath in the alfresco webapp)
log4j.appender.File.layout.ConversionPattern=%d{ABSOLUTE} %-5p [%c] %m%n
That’s fine in theory, since the configuration also specifies that the log file should roll over using a date-based suffix on a nightly basis. However, in practice the log rotation can sometimes fail on running systems, leaving log entries spanning more than one day in a single log file and ambiguity over which day a particular message was output on.
Fortunately, log4j’s PatternLayout is quite flexible, and allows you to specify a date-time format instead (in fact, this is the default if no date format specifier is given.
To print the date in ISO-8601 format, e.g. “1999-11-27 15:49:37,459”, use
log4j.appender.File.layout.ConversionPattern=%d{ISO8601} %-5p [%c] %m%n
For classic date format, e.g. “06 Nov 1994 15:49:37,459”, use
log4j.appender.File.layout.ConversionPattern=%d{DATE} %-5p [%c] %m%n
To also add dates into the console logging output (which is redirected into Tomcat’s stdout logs when running as a service), update the property log4j.appender.Console.layout.ConversionPattern.

Share Custom Actions in a JAR

Posted on February 28, 2010 by wabson

Update, 4th May 2011: The Backup action is now part of Share Extras and documentation and downloads are now available on the Custom Backup Action page.
Since the ability to package Share extensions was added in the HEAD codeline some weeks ago, both Kev and myself have demonstrated how you can package up dashlets in a JAR file for deployment into Share.
The example we both used was my Site Tags dashlet that we showed at the Alfresco Meetups last year, but at the Madrid meetup we also showed an example of how Share’s Document Library can be extended with a custom ‘backup’ action.

Document Library actions have no web-tier webscripts, but hook into the client-side actions framework using a bit of custom JavaScript. Each action has a small 16×16 icon and a bit of CSS code to apply this image, one or more text labels (which should of course be externalised for i18n goodness) and a bit of config to hook them into the app. Lastly, since most actions by their nature do something, it’s likely that they will make a RESTful call back to the repository to perform their work, which may require a custom webscript there.
That’s quite a few files, but fortunately we can use the JAR extension mechanism to package everything up nicely.
Just like the Site Tags dashlet, I set this up in Eclipse using a standard project layout and my share extensions build script (with a couple of minor changes) to build the JAR file.
To make it easy to copy this structure, I’ve uploaded a ZIP of the project directory, containing the following files

build.xml – the extensions build script
config/alfresco/messages/slingshot-custom-backup-action.properties – contains the strings used for the action label and confirmation/failure messages
config/alfresco/templates/webscripts – contains the repository-tier webscript used to create a back-up copy of the file
config/org/springframework/extensions/surf/slingshot-custom-backup-action-context.xml – Spring config used to initialise the i18n messages
config/spring-surf-config-custom.xml – not used at present, but could define additional Surf endpoints for calling third-party RESTful services
web – contains all client-side resources used by the action

It should be relatively easy to copy this structure to define your own custom action, following the custom action wiki document to understand what each file does. This will help you to build other actions that call back to the repository via a web script, but actions aren’t limited to calling Alfresco services only. For some examples, take a look at my own list of Share action ideas.
Once you have your structure you can build the JAR file using Ant, e.g.

ant -Djar.name=share-backup-action.jar

The JAR file can then be dropped into Tomcat’s shared/lib directory, and all that remains is to configure the document actions web scripts to pull in the action definition. This is the slightly fiddly bit.
Firstly, copy the web script configuration file WEB-INF/classes/alfresco/site-webscripts/org/alfresco/components/documentlibrary/documentlist.get.config.xml from the Share webapp into the directory alfresco/web-extension/site-webscripts/org/alfresco/components/documentlibrary in Tomcat’s shared/classes to override it. You should see a section <actionSet id="document"> which defines all the actions shown for a normal document in the document list view.
To add the backup action to this list, add the following line just before the </actionset> element for that block.

<action type="action-link" id="onActionBackup" permission="" label="actions.document.backup" />

If you also want the action to show up in the document details view, you need to copy the file WEB-INF/classes/alfresco/site-webscripts/org/alfresco/components/document-details/document-actions.get.config.xml into alfresco/web-extension/site-webscripts/org/alfresco/components/document-details in shared/classes in the same way.
Lastly, we need to ensure that the client-side JS and CSS assets get pulled into the UI as unfortunately the config files do not allow us to specify these dependencies.
To do this, we must override the file WEB-INF/classes/alfresco/site-webscripts/org/alfresco/components/documentlibrary/actions-common.get.head.ftl. Again, copy this into the corresponding directory in shared/classes/alfresco/web-extension and add the following lines at the bottom of the file.

<@link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="${page.url.context}/res/components/documentlibrary/backup-action.css" />
<@script type="text/javascript" src="${page.url.context}/res/components/documentlibrary/backup-action.js"></@script>

That’s it. Now you can restart Tomcat and you should see the ‘Backup’ action – complete with UI labels and icon – in the Document Library.
Downloads

Adding Custom Aspect Support in Alfresco Share

Posted on February 25, 2010 by wabson

Since Alfresco 3.2 introduced the ability to configure the metadata forms used in the Document Library, there have been several good articles published on how to add support for custom document types.
One of the first questions people often ask when they see Share is how they can easily extend the metadata fields that are stored against a document. Whilst this can be done using custom document types, aspects often provide a more agile solution.
So this article should explain how Share can be easily extended to support custom aspects using good practice techniques, specifically

Ensuring all extended configuration is placed outside of the share webapp, so protecting it from upgrades and redeployments, and
Using i18n labels for all text strings that appear in the UI, thus allowing translation of the labels.

The example provides a number of files, all of which should be placed below the tomcat/shared/classes directory of your Alfresco installation. If you are not using the Alfresco-bundled version of Tomcat then you may need to create this directory yourself and configure Tomcat’s shared classloader to use it.
First you will need to configure the repository with your custom model definition. In my case I am using a simple knowledge base model that defines a single aspect kb:referencable. The aspect adds a new text property that allows a unique KB reference number to be added to documents.
First, the Spring configuration defined in alfresco/extension/kb-model-context.xml

<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?>
<!DOCTYPE beans PUBLIC '-//SPRING//DTD BEAN//EN' 'http://www.springframework.org/dtd/spring-beans.dtd'>
<beans>
    <!-- Registration of new models -->
    <bean id="extension.kb.dictionaryBootstrap" parent="dictionaryModelBootstrap" depends-on="dictionaryBootstrap">
        <property name="models">
            <list>
                <value>alfresco/extension/kb-model.xml</value>
            </list>
        </property>
    </bean>
     <bean id="extension.kb.resourceBundle" class="org.alfresco.i18n.ResourceBundleBootstrapComponent">
       <property name="resourceBundles">
          <list>
             <value>alfresco.messages.knowledgebase</value>
          </list>
       </property>
    </bean>
</beans>

Then, define the model itself in alfresco/extension/kb-model.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!-- Definition of Knowledge Base Model -->
<model name="kb:knowledgebase" xmlns="http://www.alfresco.org/model/dictionary/1.0">
   <!-- Optional meta-data about the model -->
   <description>Knowledge Base Model</description>
   <author>Will Abson</author>
   <version>1.0</version>
   <!-- Imports are required to allow references to definitions in other models -->
   <imports>
      <!-- Import Alfresco Dictionary Definitions -->
      <import uri="http://www.alfresco.org/model/dictionary/1.0" prefix="d"/>
      <!-- Import Alfresco Content Domain Model Definitions -->
      <import uri="http://www.alfresco.org/model/content/1.0" prefix="cm"/>
   </imports>
   <!-- Introduction of new namespaces defined by this model -->
   <namespaces>
      <namespace uri="http://www.alfresco.com/model/knowledgebase/1.0" prefix="kb"/>
   </namespaces>
    <aspects>
      <!-- Definition of new Content Aspect: Knowledge Base Document -->
      <aspect name="kb:referencable">
         <title>Knowledge Base Referencable</title>
         <properties>
            <property name="kb:documentRef">
               <type>d:text</type>
            </property>
         </properties>
      </aspect>
   </aspects>
</model>

The last file in our model definition adds some i18n labels for the aspect and property names. Add the following content to the file alfresco/messages/knowledgebase.properties.

# Custom knowledge base messages
kb_knowledgebase.property.kb_documentRef.title=KB Reference
kb_knowledgebase.aspect.kb_referencable.title=Knowledge Base Referencable
aspect.kb_referencable=Knowledge Base Referencable

With the model added the repository should start up without errors and will know about the new aspect. In order to use it, we need to configure Share to show this aspect in the Manage Aspects dialogue and to display the KB Reference field in forms, when a node has the aspect applied.
The file alfresco/web-extension/share-config-custom.xml can be used to do both these things.

<alfresco-config>
   <!-- Document Library config section -->
   <config evaluator="string-compare" condition="DocumentLibrary">
      <!--
         Used by the "Manage Aspects" action
         For custom aspects, remember to also add the relevant i18n string(s)
            cm_myaspect=My Aspect
      -->
      <aspects>
         <!-- Aspects that a user can see -->
         <visible>
            <aspect name="cm:generalclassifiable" />
            <aspect name="cm:complianceable" />
            <aspect name="cm:dublincore" />
            <aspect name="cm:effectivity" />
            <aspect name="cm:summarizable" />
            <aspect name="cm:versionable" />
            <aspect name="cm:templatable" />
            <aspect name="cm:emailed" />
            <aspect name="emailserver:aliasable" />
            <aspect name="cm:taggable" />
            <aspect name="app:inlineeditable" />
            <aspect name="kb:referencable" />
         </visible>
         <!-- Aspects that a user can add. Same as "visible" if left empty -->
         <addable>
         </addable>
         <!-- Aspects that a user can remove. Same as "visible" if left empty -->
         <removeable>
         </removeable>
      </aspects>
   </config>
   <!-- cm:content type (existing nodes) -->
   <config  evaluator="node-type" condition="cm:content">
      <forms>
         <!-- Default form configuration used on the document details and edit metadata pages -->
         <form>
            <field-visibility>
               <show id="kb:documentRef" />
            </field-visibility>
         </form>
         <!-- Document Library pop-up Edit Metadata form -->
         <form id="doclib-simple-metadata">
            <field-visibility>
               <show id="kb:documentRef" />
            </field-visibility>
            <edit-form template="../documentlibrary/forms/doclib-simple-metadata.ftl" />
         </form>
         <!-- Document Library Inline Edit form -->
         <form id="doclib-inline-edit">
            <field-visibility>
               <show id="kb:documentRef" />
            </field-visibility>
         </form>
      </forms>
   </config>
</alfresco-config>

This configuration will add the KB reference field at the bottom of the main Edit Metadata form, the pop-up edit form used in the document list view and lastly the in-line edit form used for HTML, text and XML content (introduced in Alfresco 3.3).
Note: More advanced control is possible over the placement of the field within the form, but this requires copying over the full form definitions for the cm:content type from the file alfresco/web-framework-config-commons.xml (or alfresco/share-form-config.xml in 3.3 onwards) inside the Share webapp and adding the attribute replace="true" on the <config> element.
Now that you’ve configured Share, you must restart Tomcat so that the changes are picked up. The application should start up and you should be able to add the aspect to some content and see the document reference field appear in forms.
The last thing to do is to add an i18n label for the Knowledge Base aspect in the Manage Aspects dialogue. To do this we need to define a small bit of Spring configuration in the file alfresco/web-extension/custom-slingshot-application-context.xml, which will wire the knowledgebase.properties file we created earlier into Share.

<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?>
<!DOCTYPE beans PUBLIC '-//SPRING//DTD BEAN//EN' 'http://www.springframework.org/dtd/spring-beans.dtd'>
<beans>
   <!-- Add Knowledge Base messages -->
   <bean id="webscripts.kb.resources" class="org.springframework.extensions.surf.util.ResourceBundleBootstrapComponent">
      <property name="resourceBundles">
         <list>
            <value>alfresco.messages.knowledgebase</value>
         </list>
      </property>
   </bean>
</beans>

In versions prior to Alfresco 3.3 (when some changes were made to the Share resource bundle classes) the following configuration must be used instead (note the different class name)

<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?>
<!DOCTYPE beans PUBLIC '-//SPRING//DTD BEAN//EN' 'http://www.springframework.org/dtd/spring-beans.dtd'>
<beans>
   <!-- Add Knowledge Base messages -->
   <bean id="webscripts.kb.resources" class="org.alfresco.i18n.ResourceBundleBootstrapComponent">
      <property name="resourceBundles">
         <list>
            <value>alfresco.messages.knowledgebase</value>
         </list>
      </property>
   </bean>
</beans>

This configuration tells Share to look in the file knowledgebase.properties for aspect labels, in addition to the core message bundles.
With that file added you should be able to restart Tomcat again and see the correct label in the Manage Aspects dialogue. You’ve now fully-customised Alfresco Share to support additional custom aspects.
Update: Thanks to Brian Ochs, who pointed out that the additional message aspect.kb_referencable is also required in knowledgebase.properties.
~~Update: The configuration files in this tutorial can now be downloaded in ZIP format. To use them directly extract the archive into tomcat/shared/classes and restart the server.~~ Please do not use these files, which are now outdated.

Opportunistic Alfresco

Posted on February 6, 2010 by wabson

Great post from Jono at Ubuntu on making the Ubuntu platform better suited to opportunistic development, basically helping people who want to ‘scratch an itch’ but don’t have the time or commitment to write an application in the traditional sense.
This is the first time I’ve come across a term for this sort of activity, but it describes very well what Apple have done so well with their app store, and what many of us hope Google may be about to do better.
The faster development cycle afforded with open source means that such an environment is much better suited in theory to rapid application development than proprietary platforms, but it does require the necessary infrastructure to be in place.
I’ve been having thoughts recently on how we could better support this type of development within Alfresco. Like the iPhone and like Ubuntu, Alfresco is much more than just a product, it’s a solid platform for others to develop on.
In our case the building blocks are the web scripts and Surf frameworks that we recently fed back up into Spring, and the delivery mechanism could easily be provided by the Share UI.
Share already allows developers to define self-contained bits of functionality as dashlets, and also provides mechanisms to manage the configuration and display of these dashlets within the application. That’s 90% of our intrastructure already there.
The missing 10% is a mechanism by which developers can publish these extensions to make them available for others, basically a distibution channel, or if you must, an app store.
This is why I’ve started spec’ing out what I’m tentatively calling Share Components, to provide a directory of Share extensions and an easy mechanism for users to query such directories (note, plural) and install components from them onto their own Alfresco systems.
I’m making it very clear that this is a proposed feature for Share but nonetheless it’s one that I firmly believe is critical to ensuring that others – including our partners and others in the wider community – are able to join up their opportunistic dots using the Alfresco platfom.

New alfrescowww-xml library

Posted on November 21, 2008 by wabson

Thanks to Ben who has been beta-testing the code, I’ve fixed a few bugs within the code that were preventing the getXMLDocuments() method to fail under certain conditions.

The new JAR file is available here and the source JAR here.

wabson

part three of the ever-exciting adventure

Tag Archives: Alfresco

Visualising Geotagged Content with Google Maps

Adding dates in alfresco.log

Opportunistic Alfresco

New alfrescowww-xml library