topic Re: Executing a batch from a script in Alfresco Archive

Executing a batch from a script

shlomi — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 10:14:18 GMT

Hello,My alfresco is installed on windows, and I have created a space called incoming. There is a rule on this space, that distribute the files from it to their respective space. In a specific situation, I want to execute a batch file (.bat), that loads the content of the file into the DB (oracle),

Re: Executing a batch from a script

kevinr — Sun, 25 Nov 2007 22:50:48 GMT

As you said your javascript "runs on the server-side" - it does not have access to any Browser related objects or Browser JavaScript APIs such as ActiveXObject.

Re: Executing a batch from a script

shlomi — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 08:51:35 GMT

Hi, Thank you for your reply.

As you said your javascript "runs on the server-side" - it does not have access to any Browser related objects or Browser JavaScript APIs such as ActiveXObject.

I see, in that case, what are my options with integrating a third party application (on the server side) that needs to execute by a rule on a specific file? (say when the file arrives, and have a certain extension to its name, run a third party application, that uploads this file to our database).

Regards,
Shlomi

Re: Executing a batch from a script

kevinr — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 12:42:09 GMT

A Rule executes a Repository Action object - these objects are Java code (usefully they can also be called via the JavaScript API) - and as such can make use of any Java features such as executing external processes.

Thanks,

Kevin

Re: Executing a batch from a script

shlomi — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 16:19:52 GMT

Thank you,
That is exactly what I have done, and it worked perfectly.

Good day,
Shlomi

Re: Executing a batch from a script

anovotny — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 15:18:03 GMT

Hi,
I need to perform the same task (run .bat file), but don't have much experiences with Java and JavaScript and from above text I didn't get it.
Could you please write some short example how to achieve it?
Thank you
Ales

Re: Executing a batch from a script

gyro_gearless — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 14:39:28 GMT

Hi foilks,

uncle Gyro's 2 ct for the weekend:

Usually (say in 9 out of 10 cases) it is bad idea to call out to external processes from Java, especially on the server side: you have to take care of OS pecularities, blocking behaviour, security and the like. In an EJB environment this isn't even allowed for that reasons (usually in a non-strict sense, all application servers i know dont thwart that…).

In most cases, Java offers a more "javaish", more straight way to perform task - for the SQLLDR case it would be to open a straight JDBC connection and feed the database!

Said that, of you absolute must, Runtime.exec() or class ProcessBuilder are your friends. But beware: when using exec(), you have to take care to spawn two consumer threads to gobble the subprocess' output streams, otherwise your exec() call may block. I suppose there are some helper classes out there.

HTH
Gyro

Re: Executing a batch from a script

anovotny — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 12:37:25 GMT

Hello,
maybe I am missing some important part of knowledge…
I tried to execute this very short script:


var r = Runtime.getRuntime();
r.exec("calc.exe");‍‍‍

And received the error

org.alfresco.error.AlfrescoRuntimeException: 10300137 Error during command servlet processing: 10300136 Failed to execute script 'workspace://SpacesStore/866c3275-531c-4823-8ad2-14f2a622baac': 10300135 ReferenceError: "Runtime" is not defined. (workspace://SpacesStore/866c3275-531c-4823-8ad2-14f2a622baac#13)
caused by:
org.alfresco.scripts.ScriptException: 10300136 Failed to execute script 'workspace://SpacesStore/866c3275-531c-4823-8ad2-14f2a622baac': 10300135 ReferenceError: "Runtime" is not defined. (workspace://SpacesStore/866c3275-531c-4823-8ad2-14f2a622baac#13)‍‍‍

What am I doing wrong?

Thank you.
Ales

Re: Executing a batch from a script

kevinr — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 15:48:41 GMT

I assume that is JavaScript? For security reason, you cannot execute raw Java code within our Rhino JavaScript integration - to prevent some extremely unpleasant possibilities! See my post above: http://forums.alfresco.com/en/viewtopic.php?p=32386#p32386
you need to wrap your Java code into an Alfresco "action" bean that you can then call from the JavaScript code via the "actions" object - that is exactly what the other user above did to get it working.

Cheers,

Kev

Re: Executing a batch from a script

anovotny — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 15:24:40 GMT

Thanks for the answer.
Yes, it is javascript and I got your point.
So I try to follow this http://wiki.alfresco.com/wiki/Custom_Actions and this http://www.ecmarchitect.com/images/articles/alfresco-actions/actions-article.pdf
But I don’t understand where should be placed the code with class definitions. Maybe I am missing some basic knowledge…
Could you please write some short step-by-step procedure like for idiots?
Thanks a lot
Ales