topic Re: Editable create date in Alfresco Archive

Editable create date

ajshaw — Tue, 03 Oct 2006 10:17:12 GMT

Hi. I wan't to temporarily make the create date and modified date fields editable. This is because the use of webdav has destroyed some metadata.<show-property name="created" read-only="false" show-in-edit-mode="true" /> results in some drop down lists being shown to select the date, but it's

Re: Editable create date

dschmalz — Fri, 06 Oct 2006 13:42:55 GMT

Hi. I wan't to temporarily make the create date and modified date fields editable. This is because the use of webdav has destroyed some metadata.

<show-property name="created" read-only="false" show-in-edit-mode="true" />

results in some drop down lists being shown to select the date, but it's greyed out and un-editable. Can anyone help? Thankyou.

If you look at the definition of the the "created" property in the content model (contentModel.xml), you will find the following:


   <aspect name="cm:auditable">
         <title>Auditable</title>
         <properties>
            <property name="cm:created">
               <title>Created</title>
               <type>d:datetime</type>
               <protected>true</protected>
               <mandatory enforced="true">true</mandatory>
            </property>
            <property name="cm:creator">
               <title>Creator</title>
               <type>d:text</type>
               <protected>true</protected>
               <mandatory enforced="true">true</mandatory>
            </property>
            <property name="cm:modified">
               <title>Modified</title>
               <type>d:datetime</type>
               <protected>true</protected>
               <mandatory enforced="true">true</mandatory>
            </property>
            <property name="cm:modifier">
               <title>Modifier</title>
               <type>d:text</type>
               <protected>true</protected>
               <mandatory enforced="true">true</mandatory>
            </property>
            <property name="cm:accessed">
               <title>Accessed</title>
               <type>d:datetime</type>
               <protected>true</protected>
            </property>
         </properties>
      </aspect>
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In other terms, the "cm:created" property is protected, which, from my understanding, means that once it has been set, it cannot be updated. This is a good practice because if you want to perform audit, you cannot afford that some code changes this value. You can probably disable temporarily the protection by changing this file and restart Alfresco, although I would not recommend it.

David

Re: Editable create date

ajshaw — Fri, 06 Oct 2006 13:52:38 GMT

Thanks alot.

I'll try that out. Meanwhile i have been using a freemarker template with a javascript script to change the create dates. This doesn't give me the nice dropdown date selectors (although i could make one i suppose), but it actually worked out easier because i can see all the documents i need to change in one view, rather than having to navigate to the properties page of each individual content item.

It seems that the protected data items can be altered programatically. I guess that the purpose of the protection is a second layer of defence as far as the web client is involved, in adition to simply specifying whether the property is read only in edit mode.

Cheers.

Re: Editable create date

dschmalz — Fri, 06 Oct 2006 14:08:48 GMT

Thanks for the additional info regarding the metadata
David