topic Re: Workdesk Integration into Java/J2EE webapp in Alfresco Archive

Workdesk Integration into Java/J2EE webapp

cancerian1978 — Thu, 16 Jan 2014 16:10:16 GMT

Hi Alfresco Gurus, I am doing some research on the ways to integrate our java based webapp with Alfresco repo and provide the user some kind of UI so that they can browse/add/edit documents. During this I came across Alfresco Workdesk and the UI seems to be perfect for our needs. I downloaded trial

Re: Workdesk Integration into Java/J2EE webapp

deko — Fri, 17 Jan 2014 08:09:03 GMT

Hi cancerian1978,

The Workdesk feature you are looking for is called "Remote Control", where you can use URL calls to perform following actions:

Search for items based on metadata
Open a folder
View a document
Modify/Edit an item´s properties

Please see the section "Remote control interface" in Workdesk Configuration Guide (available via docs.alfresco.com), where the URL parameters for a remote search are explained and examples for searches are given.

Please note also that the Remote Control feature is not available in Workdesk Community Edition.

Best regards,
Dennis

Re: Workdesk Integration into Java/J2EE webapp

cancerian1978 — Fri, 17 Jan 2014 14:47:00 GMT

I have downloaded trial version and trying to access the UI with URL based approach defined in Remote Control Interface and I get the following exceptions, what does this mean?

Error: OwAppContext.handleRequest: External Event Handler, targetId = 'RemoteControl.Doc' not defined or not allowed in RoleManager.
Error Source: OECM

com.wewebu.ow.server.exceptions.OwInvalidOperationException: OwAppContext.handleRequest: External Event Handler, targetId = 'RemoteControl.Doc' not defined or not allowed in RoleManager.

Re: Workdesk Integration into Java/J2EE webapp

deko — Mon, 20 Jan 2014 09:12:00 GMT

Hi cancerian1978,

The issue seems to be the ID in your remote control plugin call. Exception is telling me that you tried targetId = 'RemoteControl.Doc'. You have to use the full plugin id of the Remote Control master plugin as defined in owplugins.xml (PLugin configuration file). If you did not touch the configuration at all, the default id value should be 'com.wewebu.ow.RemoteControl'.

An exemplary Remote Control call to to search for documents could look like the following:

h_ttp://localhost:8080/workdesk/?owappeid=com.wewebu.ow.RemoteControl.Doc&ctrlev=search&plugid=com.wewebu.ow.Search&stname=Find%20Customer%20Documents.xml&maxsize=100&prop_Pwdcm:CustomerIDAspect.owdcm:CustomerID=20130214-Germany-24

The parameters here are as followed:

- owappeid=com.wewebu.ow.RemoteControl.Doc
This is the plugin id of the Remote Control master plugin (as defined in owplugins.xml) appended by ".Doc"

- ctrlev=search
Keyword that defines you want to perform a remote search

- plugid=com.wewebu.ow.Search
The plugin ID of the Search master plugin as defined in owplugins.xml

- stname=Find%20Customer%20Documents.xml
The search template name as it can be found under owsearchtemplates (location for search templates). Please escape spaces and special characters!

- maxsize=100
The number of maximum results returned. In this case only the first 100 hits are returned

- prop_Pwdcm:CustomerIDAspect.owdcm:CustomerID=20130214-Germany-24
A property value as it should be used in the defined search template. In this case the value of prop_Pwdcm:CustomerIDAspect.owdcm:CustomerID should be "20130214-Germany-24"

I hope this example made things clear now and you can get your remote control search to work.

Best regards,
deko

Re: Workdesk Integration into Java/J2EE webapp

cancerian1978 — Tue, 21 Jan 2014 13:40:00 GMT

I got it working now, thank you so much.

Re: Workdesk Integration into Java/J2EE webapp

deko — Tue, 21 Jan 2014 14:24:36 GMT

Feeling happy when you are happy!

Best regards,
deko

Re: Workdesk Integration into Java/J2EE webapp

cancerian1978 — Thu, 23 Jan 2014 19:03:48 GMT

Hi Deko, thanks for your help so far, I got the workdesk remote thing working but it supports limited functionality. Now my question is, are there any alternate solutions like this where I can construct URL and integrate from my application for ex: is there a way to integrate Alfresco Share/Explorer using the same approach or some other UI's.

Regards.

Re: Workdesk Integration into Java/J2EE webapp

deko — Fri, 24 Jan 2014 08:26:39 GMT

Hi cancerian1978,

I don´t fully understand your question. You wanted to integrate Workdesk into your application and therefore you can only use those remote control URLs at the moment. Do you want to integrate Share now also into your application? Or do you want to integrate Share into Workdesk or the other way round?

You said the functionality is limited, could you please give me the use case you want to address?

Best regards,
deko

Re: Workdesk Integration into Java/J2EE webapp

cancerian1978 — Sat, 25 Jan 2014 14:04:30 GMT

First regarding the workdesk, currently workdesk can be accessed from my webapp using URL's via Remote Control plugin. Using this approach we can search the documents, open a folder, open a document. Is there a way to check-in documents? Also to open a folder/document using URL we need DMS id, how do we get it? Do we need to make a separate webservice call to get the ID and then use it as URL param?

Now coming to my other question, I was asking if is there a way, similar to Workdesk remote control plugin, to access Alfresco Share/Explorer or any other UI using URL based approach.

Please let me know if this is clear or do you need me to elaborate more.

Regards.

Re: Workdesk Integration into Java/J2EE webapp

deko — Mon, 27 Jan 2014 07:12:32 GMT

Hi cancerian1978,

If you want to use "extended" functionality (e.g. checking in a document) I would like to refer you to the Alfresco Rest API or CMIS API, both offering web services to realize such use cases:

- http://wiki.alfresco.com/wiki/Repository_RESTful_API_Reference
- http://wiki.alfresco.com/wiki/CMIS

Regarding the DMSID used in Workdesk, I´d like to point you to the DMSID section in the Workdesk Configuration Guide, where the format of DMSIDs is explained in more detail. As Workdesk is using CMIS to connect to Alfresco, the format of a CMIS DMSI is looking like the following:


ocmis,<native CMIS repository ID>,<native CMIS object ID>
‍‍‍

An exemplary DMSID based on that format could look like the following one:


ocmis, 56fe6a25-f3d6-4f6a-b4a4-496fc4c31afb,workspace:||SpacesStore|ca296fcd-15e7-41c2-a368-897d9864cd41
‍‍‍

The CMIS repository ID is a fix ID for your Alfresco repo and can be read out using following URL:

h_ttp://SERVERORT/alfresco/service/cmis/index.html

To retreive the CMIS object ID you might have to call the related services if you don´t know the ID already.

Best regards,
deko

Re: Workdesk Integration into Java/J2EE webapp

unknown-user — Tue, 08 Apr 2014 15:38:23 GMT

Hi Deko,
I am working with Cancerian1978 on this integration. Currently when we use the remote control URL and open Workdesk we have to login. We would like to make the login happen behind the scenes in our own code instead of asking our users to login each time. I did see something about writing Login Interceptors but not sure how to go about it. Or like we connect to Alfresco and can create a Session Object, can we do something similar in Workdesk?
Thanks in advance for all your help.

Re: Workdesk Integration into Java/J2EE webapp

d_evil — Fri, 11 Apr 2014 07:53:52 GMT

Hi mt,

basically you would need to implement the
<blockcode>
package com.wewebu.ow.server.ecmimpl.opencmis.auth;
interface OwCMISAuthenticationInterceptor
{
    /**
     * Initialization of AuthProviderFactory instance
     * with corresponding configuration.
     * @param configNode OwXMLUtil node which represents AuthProviderFactory configuration
     * @throws OwException
     */
    void init(OwXMLUtil configNode) throws OwException;

    /**
     * Called to create a new Authentication provider which should be used in
     * communication between CMIS client and server.
     * @param information Map current available informations for OpenCMIS Session creation
     * @return AuthenticationProvider which should be used for session creation
     * @throws OwException
     */
    AuthenticationProvider createAuthenticationProvider(Map<String, ?> information) throws OwException;

    /**
     * Called before login page is rendered, can be used for redirect or preparation
     * of this instance. The return value defines if the process sequence should be processed as
     * defined, or if it should stop because the response was created by this instance.
     * <p>If true is returned, by default a login is processed through network.
     * The login will call the {@link #createAuthenticationProvider(Map)} and
     * verify against back-end if login was successful.</p>
     * @param req HttpServletRequest
     * @param resp HttpServletResponse
     * @return boolean true process sequence as defined, false stop processing
     * @throws OwException
     */
    public boolean onRequest(HttpServletRequest req, HttpServletResponse resp) throws OwException, IOException;
}
</blockcode>

The important parts are onRequest and createAuthenticationProvider, the onRequest will be handled when Workdesk is accessed, you may extract some information from HttpServletRequest here to do some kind of SSO magic. If the method return true, it will be progressed as Authentication.

So after you got all information and the login is processed, at some point the createAuthenticationProvider is called and will get the current OpenCMIS Session setting in a parameter Map.
That method is creating the OpneCMIS AuthenticationProvider, responsible for authentication and creation of OpenCMIS Session (for more information see: http://chemistry.apache.org/java/opencmis.html)

Hope that helps,
D.evil

PS: Configuring your Authentication Interceptor see the configuration files owbootstrap.xml
<blockcode>
<EcmAdapter>
<AuthInterceptor className="com.wewebu.ow.server.ecmimpl.opencmis.alfresco.OwCMISAlfrescoOAuthInterceptor">
<!– any nodes defined here are provided as OwXMLUtil in init method –>
</AuthInterceptor>
</blockcode>

Re: Workdesk Integration into Java/J2EE webapp

cancerian1978 — Thu, 17 Apr 2014 20:13:00 GMT

Yes D.evil, that is how we were able to login programmatically.

Thank you.