Ability to integrate with existing web site

[ricotnt]

Hi everyone,

I'm a newbie to CMS but hear it's da bomb. I have a web site I've built using JSP/Servlets/MySQL. I am wondering if there is a method to incorporate my legacy website within an Alfresco CMS site. Ideally I could have the two communicate with one another (e.g. user enters a search in Alfresco and results are displayed in my legacy web page). I would hate to have to do a rewrite to use a CMS product. I haven't been able to get an understanding of how or if this can be done.

I appreciate your answers and insight.

[jpotts]

One difference between Alfresco and other open source CMS solutions (like Drupal, for instance) is that there really isn't an "Alfresco CMS site". The good news is that this means integration won't require a re-write like it would for Drupal because a CMS like Drupal owns the content and the page rendering. Alfresco on the other hand only cares about content–it isn't involved in rendering pages.

To integrate your existing JSP/servlet/MySQL site with Alfresco, you have several options, depending on what you are trying to do. For example, you could:
- Manage your JSPs within Alfresco and publish them to your app server box. You probably already manage your JSPs in source code control so this probably isn't what you want to do.
- Store some or all of the content in Alfresco and retrieve it dynamically from your JSP/servlet front-end. This would give non-technical users a user interface (Alfresco Share) to edit content while preserving the front-end code you have already written. Obviously this involves some amount of refactoring as your front-end already persists its content in MySQL. We have an example Spring app that does this called Web Quick Start that you could take a look at.
- Store some or all of the content in Alfresco and publish it to your front-end. Similar to the previous but instead of querying for the content from the front-end, Alfresco will push the content to your front-end.
- Keep your web site as-is and simply query for content stored in Alfresco. In this case, Alfresco and your web site are two separate things, but Alfresco has some content you want to expose to your web site. One good way to do this would be to use a CMIS client (like OpenCMIS) on the front-end to query Alfresco.
- Incorporate parts of your existing web site into Alfresco's Share user interface. Sort of inverting the use case, this would give Alfresco Share users a way to see content that your front-end web site is managing and rendering. You can do this by writing custom Dashlets that either make services calls to your web site or pull your web site into an iFrame. If this is what you want to do, take a look at the many examples in the Share Extras project on Google Code to get an idea of how it is done.

So, lot's of options depending on exactly what you want to do. Hopefully this gives you a few ideas.

Jeff

[ricotnt]

Thanks Jeff. Your reply was very helpful! I will start digging into your suggestions.

[heb]

Hi Jeff - let me just try to make sure I understand correctly. So I should be able to deploy a web app in a different container, and reference content from Alfresco in the JSPs from the web app? Across containers?
The Web Quick Start mentions a web app - can I try to deploy that in a separate Tomcat container for example and still consume content out of Alfresco?
Can you please suggest some more detailed instructions or docs to do so.

Thanks!!!

[huima]

As there is so much fundamentally missing from your perception what Alfresco is - and how it could be of assistance, it could be best to start by reading the Professional Alfresco-book – which does a great job describing the architecture and building blocks for your solution. There is also a good chance that Alfresco is not the solution you are currently looking – and even in that sense few hours or day spent with the book is a wise investment.

If you need suggestions on which chapters to read and look first, just ping me and I'll give you tips.

[sunilpatel]

Hi everyone,

I am new to Alfresco CMS.I want to integrate my existing jsp project with Alfresco CMS.

So please help me technically.

I appreciate your answers.

Thanks,
Sunil Patel

[mitpatoliya]

Sunil,
have you checked the Jeff's answer give above. It should give you very much idea about the possible approaches. Do you have any questions regarding any of the approach described above?