The Alfresco Platform | Alfresco Developer Guide

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Alfresco Developer Guide

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Alfresco Developer Guide

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Overview of this book

Alfresco Developer Guide

Alfresco Developer Guide

Credits

Credits

About the Author

About the Author

About the Reviewers

About the Reviewers

Preface

Preface

Free Chapter

The Alfresco Platform

The Alfresco Platform

Alfresco in the Real World

Example Used throughout This Book

Alfresco Architecture

Customizing Alfresco

Dusting Off Your Toolbox

Understanding Alfresco's Editions

Summary

Getting Started with Alfresco

Getting Started with Alfresco

Obtaining the SDK

Setting up the SDK in Eclipse

Extending Alfresco

Packaging and Deploying Customizations

Troubleshooting

Starting Over

Summary

Working with Content Models

Working with Content Models

Defining SomeCo's Content Model

Step-by-Step: Relating Types with Associations

Step-by-Step: Adding Aspects to the Content Model

Step-by-Step: Finishing up the Model

Modeling Summary

Modeling Best Practices

Configuring the UI

Working with Content Programmatically

Summary

Handling Content Automatically with Actions, Behaviors, Transformers, and Extractors

Handling Content Automatically with Actions, Behaviors, Transformers, and Extractors

Encapsulating Content Operations in Actions

Binding Logic to Custom Types with Behaviors

Extracting Metadata from Files

Transforming Content from One Format to Another

Summary

Customizing the Web Client User Interface

Customizing the Web Client User Interface

Knowing When to Customize Alfresco's Web Client and When to Write Your Own

Adding New Menu Items with UI Actions

Writing Action Evaluators to Show/Hide UI Actions

Changing How the Web Client Renders Data with Custom Component Renderers

Creating Custom Dialogs

Creating Custom Wizards

Customizing Web Client JSP Pages

Summary

Exposing Content through a RESTful API with Web Scripts

Exposing Content through a RESTful API with Web Scripts

Introducing the Web Script Framework

Planning the SomeCo Whitepapers and Ratings API

Retrieving Data with Web Scripts

Writing Java-Backed Web Scripts

Wiring a Web Script to UI Widgets

Handling Form Data

Customizing the Web Client with Web Scripts

Advanced Web Scripts

Summary

Advanced Workflow

Advanced Workflow

What is a Workflow?

Creating Process Definitions

Using the jBPM Graphical Process Designer

Wiring a Process to the Alfresco UI

Assigning Tasks to Users and Groups

Adding Logic to Workflows with Actions and Process Variables

Using the Workflow API

Using Timers

Debugging Workflows

Comparing Alfresco Workflow Options

Summary

Web Content Management

Web Content Management

Understanding the Difference between Alfresco DM and Alfresco WCM

Obtaining Alfresco WCM

Creating Web Projects

Creating Web Forms

Deploying Content

Performing Post-Deployment Processing

Modifying and Creating WCM Workflows

Working with the AVM API

Using the AVM Console

Summary

Security

Security

Authenticating and Synchronizing with LDAP

Setting Up Single Sign-On (SSO)

Working with Security Services

Summary

API Reference and Examples

API Reference and Examples

Foundation API Public Services

Lucene Queries

JavaScript

API Examples

Alfresco Configuration Reference

Alfresco Configuration Reference

Actions

Web Client Config Elements

Action Groups

Metadata Extractors

Transformers

Graphical View of the Alfresco Content Model

Index

Index

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Summary

Hopefully, this chapter has given you several ideas about how Alfresco can be used to implement Document Management, Web Content Management, and custom content-centric applications by walking through examples of each. The details may still be fuzzy, but the goal was to introduce the major components and capabilities of the Alfresco platform.

The key points covered in this chapter were:

Alfresco can be used to solve a variety of content-related business problems from document management to web content management to workflow and collaboration.
Throughout the rest of the book you'll customize and extend Alfresco to meet the needs of SomeCo, a fictitious consulting firm.
Alfresco is assembled with open source components, runs as a web application within an application server, and exposes the repository through many different protocols and APIs.
Alfresco can be customized. Some types of customization are very basic (more configuration than customization) and can be performed by end users through the web client. Others are more advanced and require coding. The advanced customizations are the subject of this book.
The most common tools used to extend the platform are Java, JavaScript, FreeMarker, and XML.
The two flavors or editions of Alfresco—Labs and Enterprise—are somewhat analogous to Fedora and Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Labs is "daily build", primarily for developers and experimentation while Enterprise is for production systems.

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