topic Re: Workflow calling external program in Alfresco Archive

Workflow calling external program

christianix — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 22:53:14 GMT

Hi,I'm new to Alfresco, so excuse my unsophisticated question:I'd like to set up an Workflow in Alfresco which does the followingtart: A certain (CSV) files F get updated in a workspaceThe statistic program R is called with a fixed script operating on FThe result is written back to an Alfresco wor

Re: Workflow calling external program

invictus9 — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 17:06:22 GMT

You would need to create an advanced work flow. It doesn't need to be too "advanced".

Your program R needs to be invoked by a chunk of Java code. The Java code needs to transport F to the normal file space of the server, invoke R on the transported copy of F with the appropriate parameters, and then load the resulting file, S, back into Alfresco.

I realize that this is lacking in details. I still need to experiment with this myself. However, you might look into the implementations of data transformers supplied with Alfresco to convert, for instance, Word documents into PDF documents. Alfresco uses Open Office services to do the transformation, but I'm sure there is good educational material there.

(Fellow student.)

Re: Workflow calling external program

christianix — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 15:54:25 GMT

Thanks invictus9 for the hint with the transformers. It seems to be the right track. However, I've been searching the Alfresco source code but couldn't locate where the OpenOffice transform service is connected to Alfresco. Could you - or anybody else - give me a hint, please? Is there some document explaining the source tree layout?

Regards, Martin.

Re: Workflow calling external program

invictus9 — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 14:46:05 GMT

I don't know that you need to mine the source for information. Start with http://wiki.alfresco.com/wiki/Content_Transformations – they show a fairly example or two of transforming a file from one form into another, with parameters. I think your original problem can be restated as a transformation. You won't have to write any Java code; just the -context.xml for your particular transformation.

Re: Workflow calling external program

christianix — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 13:54:22 GMT

Hi invictus9,

it turned out that a CustomAction suits best the requirements (the changed a little from the initial ones). I got already quite far with the SDK, having an action which calls an external app (R). However, the documentation is quite a mess and learning curve is quite stiff.

Thanks for your initial help! CU around, Martin.