New Client Configuration & Extension Points in Share!

Dave Draper – UI Engineer – @_DaveDraper!

Background & Goals!•  Alfresco Share was not originally intended as a platform •  Spring Surf did not provide any extension mechanism •  Difficult to identify use cases

Goals!•  Ensure that Spring Surf continues to be compatible with

previous Alfresco releases (i.e. Avoid branching) •  Minimize Share code changes •  Provide the ability to easily extend Share without copying

and pasting code •  Provide extensions through simple JAR deployment

Solution Overview!•  Two distinct approaches to extension o Customization by targeting existing files!o Customization through Component configuration!

•  Creation of in-memory output model o Provides opportunity to amend default output!o Each FreeMarker template gets an output model!o Models can are nested!

•  Introduction of Sub-Components o Solves 1-1 Region to Component mapping problem!

File Customization!•  Works with Templates or WebScripts •  Can extend i18n properties, JavaScript controllers &

FreeMarker templates •  FreeMarker extensions depend upon custom directives

• <@region> & <@markup>!• Entirely abstract framework – scope for adding new directives!

What Can You Do With This?!•  Modify Surf templates to add, remove, modify Component

bindings •  Change display labels •  Modify the content displayed by updating the model

Sub-Components!• A Sub-Component maps to a WebScript • Only AdvancedComponents support Sub-

Components o Only Share v4.0 uses AdvancedComponents by default!o Configurable through Surf configuration!

•  Legacy configuration conversion o Components become Sub-Components!

• Support for dynamic evaluation of parameters against request

Sub-Component Evaluations!• A Sub-Component can have zero or more

Evaluations • Each Evaluation can use zero or more Evaluators •  If all Evaluators are successful then Evaluation

overrides Sub-Component defaults • WebScript URL, properties and index can be

overridden

What Can You Do With This?!•  Add, remove and modify the content within a Component •  Have a Component display different content dynamically

based on request information (e.g. The Site being accessed, the current User)

•  Re-order Sub-Components

Extensions & Modules!•  An “Extension” can contain zero or more “Modules” •  An Extension can be configured within the application

(e.g. Portlet extension) or externally in a JAR (e.g. RM extension)

•  Two deployment modes “auto” and “manual” (manual is default)

•  Default module configuration can be overridden when deployed

•  Modules can be dynamically deployed and removed without server restart.

Benefits!•  Easy to add new coarse grained content to existing Share

pages •  Easy to override i18n properties for WebScripts •  Scope for future enhancements using in-memory output

model (i.e. new FreeMarker directives)

Restrictions!•  Still difficult to extend JavaScript widgets for fine grained

changes •  Limited use of <@markup> directive in Share •  Sub-Component extensions only work with WebScripts •  Limited control over module overrides at deployment

Additional Tooling!•  “SurfBug”: identifies the Spring Surf elements on each

page: o Sub-Components & Component bindings, properties & evaluation results!o Contributing file paths!o WebScript information!o Customization data (i.e. use of extensibility directives)!

Demo!

Adding New Content (Method 1)

Create some content...

WebScript Template

WebScript Descriptor

Target Area Of Share...

Define new Sub-Component...

Deploy Module...

Result...

Hiding Existing Content (Method 1)

Target Sub-Component to hide...

Result...

Conditional Hide

Create an Evaluator...

Make the Evaluator a Spring Bean...

org.springframework.extensions.surf.spring-surf-extensibility-context.xml

Specify the Evaluator...

Result...

Adding New Content (Method 2)

Target a TemplateInstance...

Define a customization...

Create the customization file...

(in specified package)

Define a Component to bind to new Region...

(re-using the WebScript from the earlier example to provide content)

Result...

Hiding Existing Content (Method 2)

Remove the Region...

Other actions are available...  “after”  “modify”

Override i18n Properties

Find the property...

Define a customization...

Create the customization file...

Note that the location of a WebScript customization is at a different path root than for TemplateInstance

customizations!

Result...

Override JavaScript Controller

Identify JavaScript model properties...

Define a customization...

Create The Customization File...

Result...

•  Re-order entire pages (add + remove regions) •  Auto readme (see Blog post) •  PeerBind Chat Service (see David Webster’s blog) •  Resource Management module •  Portlet module •  ...

Other Customizations...

•  Dependency directives •  <@widget> directive •  Make JavaScript widgets easier to extend •  Auto-compress and collate JavaScript and CSS resources •  ...

Roadmap...

Additional Reading!•  Lots more in-depth information and tutorials available at:

http://blogs.alfresco.com/wp/ddraper •  Alfresco Surf Development Forum •  More blogs to come!

Questions?!