topic Error creating site with custom site type (presets) in Alfresco Archive

Error creating site with custom site type (presets)

alejandrogarcia — Mon, 05 Nov 2012 09:51:32 GMT

Hi folks, I have defined the my custom site type in a file named custom-site-presets.xml with this content:<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?><presets> <preset id="tacit-knowledge-workgroup-content"> <components> title <component>

Re: Error creating site with custom site type (presets)

erikwinlof — Mon, 05 Nov 2012 12:37:51 GMT

Hi Alejandro,

When you have created your site you will be directed to the "dashboard" page (well actually to a page with a page-id of "site/${siteid}/dashboard").
However there is no such page, because what you have done in your preset file is to create a page called "content" (or "site/${siteid}/content" to be exact).
If you just change all instances of "site/${siteid}/content" in your preset xml file to "site/${siteid}/dashboard" I'm sure it will work.

Cheers, Erik

PS. The text nodes ("title", "navigation", "dashboard components") I assume are comments, if not remove them as well.

Re: Error creating site with custom site type (presets)

alejandrogarcia — Mon, 05 Nov 2012 13:00:34 GMT

Hi Alejandro,

When you have created your site you will be directed to the "dashboard" page (well actually to a page with a page-id of "site/${siteid}/dashboard").
However there is no such page, because what you have done in your preset file is to create a page called "content" (or "site/${siteid}/content" to be exact).
If you just change all instances of "site/${siteid}/content" in your preset xml file to "site/${siteid}/dashboard" I'm sure it will work.

Cheers, Erik

PS. The text nodes ("title", "navigation", "dashboard components") I assume are comments, if not remove them as well.

erikwinlof, thanks a lot for your answer.

Yes, your assumptions are correct, "title", "navigation", "dashboard components" were comments and the XML file is not being deployed with such text nodes.

I forgot to mention in my first post that after getting the error for first time, what you suggest is the first thing I tried and it didn't work. Even more, after that I tried to deploy my custom presets file with exactly the same content than the original preset with ID site-dashboard (but with different ID of course), getting the same error as a result

Any more possible potential issues/mistakes?

Regards.

Re: Error creating site with custom site type (presets)

alejandrogarcia — Mon, 05 Nov 2012 13:59:08 GMT

Well I have just found out that if I place my preset directly in the presets.xml file deployed by Share, it works. So my conclusion is that Share is not recognizing my own custom presets file which includes the preset that I'm trying to define as a site type.

As far as I know as of what I was reading in this post (https://forums.alfresco.com/en/viewtopic.php?f=48&t=44619#p132816), you can define your own presets file/s which name meets the "*presets.xml" pattern, both adding your own preset tags and/or override default presets. Am I wrong with this assumption? Furthermore, as I said in my first post I'm deploying my presets XML within a JAR file in the next path:

alfresco/site-data/presets/my-custom-presets.xml‍

Any idea about what am I doing wrong?

Thanks.

Re: Error creating site with custom site type (presets)

alejandrogarcia — Mon, 05 Nov 2012 14:53:24 GMT

Great, I have found out one more thing: if I place my "*presets.xml" file in the right path within the web-extension directory it works! Specifically, I'm placing a file named "my-custom-presets.xml" in {$TOMCAT_HOME}/shared/classes/alfresco/web-extension/site-data/presets.

Now the question is, would be possible to deploy custom presets XML files within a JAR or AMP package??

Regards.

Re: Error creating site with custom site type (presets)

erikwinlof — Mon, 05 Nov 2012 15:12:48 GMT

Hi again, glad it got sorted!

Yes since v4.1 its possible to place it as /alfresco/site-data/presets/ *-presets.xml inside a .jar (in ${tomcat-home}/shared/lib).

Cheers, Erik

Note! For other readers, you must use "dashboard" rather than "content" in the code up in the original post.

Re: Error creating site with custom site type (presets)

alejandrogarcia — Mon, 05 Nov 2012 15:54:35 GMT

Yes since v4.1 its possible to place it as /alfresco/site-data/presets/ *-presets.xml inside a .jar (in ${tomcat-home}/shared/lib).

Maybe I didn't explain myself properly. It is working by placing the presets file directly in the web-extension directory rather than within a JAR file. As far as I know it should work with a JAR file the same way that you can include pages or template-instances in it. Why doesn't Alfresco Share detect my presets file when it is deployed within a JAR file? I don't know, it is what I'm trying to find out.

Note! For other readers, you must use "dashboard" rather than "content" in the code up in the original post.

True at all, it doesn't work if you try to use a different URL for the page, it seems it must be always site/${siteid}/dashboard. Somebody corrects me if I'm wrong.

Regards.

Re: Error creating site with custom site type (presets)

alejandrogarcia — Mon, 05 Nov 2012 16:38:02 GMT

It seems I have solved my problem.

I don't know what I was doing wrong, but now I can say that my custom presets file is detected by Alfresco Share after deploying it within a JAR file in the path alfresco/site-data/presets/my-custom-presets.xml. The JAR file is placed in ${tomcat-home}/shared/lib, as said before. This is the content of the custom presets file:


<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?>
<presets>
   <!– Well known preset used to generate the default Collaboration Site dashboard –>
   <preset id="my-site-dashboard">
      <components>         
         <!– title –>
         <component>
            <scope>page</scope>
            <region-id>title</region-id>
            <source-id>site/${siteid}/dashboard</source-id>
            <url>/components/title/collaboration-title</url>
         </component>
         <!– navigation –>
         <component>
            <scope>page</scope>
            <region-id>navigation</region-id>
            <source-id>site/${siteid}/dashboard</source-id>
            <url>/components/navigation/collaboration-navigation</url>
         </component>
         <component>
            <scope>page</scope>
            <region-id>component-1-1</region-id>
            <source-id>site/${siteid}/dashboard</source-id>
            <url>/components/dashlets/colleagues</url>
            <properties>
               <height>504</height>
            </properties>
         </component>
         <component>
            <scope>page</scope>
            <region-id>component-2-1</region-id>
            <source-id>site/${siteid}/dashboard</source-id>
            <url>/components/dashlets/docsummary</url>
         </component>
         <component>
            <scope>page</scope>
            <region-id>component-2-2</region-id>
            <source-id>site/${siteid}/dashboard</source-id>
            <url>/components/dashlets/activityfeed</url>
         </component>
      </components>
      <pages>
         <page id="site/${siteid}/dashboard">
            <title>Collaboration Site Dashboard</title>
            <title-id>page.siteDashboard.title</title-id>
            <description>Collaboration site's dashboard page</description>
            <description-id>page.siteDashboard.description</description-id>
            <template-instance>dashboard-10-columns-wide-right</template-instance>
            <authentication>user</authentication>
            <properties>
               <sitePages>[{"pageId":"documentlibrary"}]</sitePages>
            </properties>
         </page>
      </pages>
   </preset>
</presets>
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As you can see, it is quite similar to the default preset with ID site-dashboard, the difference is that I have removed the welcome component and I'm using a custom template-instance.

I hope it helps others facing a similar issue. By the way, I'm using Alfresco 4.2.b, although it should work on any Alfresco 4.1 or greater.

Thanks for those who helped me.

Regards.

Re: Error creating site with custom site type (presets)

purohitsumit — Sat, 05 Oct 2013 23:57:50 GMT

Hi

Thanks for posting your solution here. It helped me alot. I wish i had found this thread 1 day earlier. That would have saved 1 day. 🙂

Just to summarize this solution for future reader.

1. If you put your preset.xml file in "/alfresco/web-extension/site-data/presets" then place you .jar into "{tomcat-share}\webapps\share\WEB-INF\lib" 

2. If you put your preset.xml file in "/alfresco/site-data/presets" then place your .jar file into "{tomcat-share}\shared\lib" 

–sumit

PS : I find alfresco dir structure confusing and overly complex.