Alfresco dropbox access

[ggates1]

Hi,

New to Alfresco and Alfresco integration. So I am hoping I posted in the correct forum.

I would like to copy alfresco document library files to a drop box account app_folder.   I have this crazy vision that I would be able to include a icon or button next to each file in the document library which would put/get a file on drop box.  That said here is what I have so far.
I created a java main class client that handles the o Authentication to drop box and I am able to move files from my C:\ drive to my drop box account using the drop box api java sdk. 

So this leaves me with the approach within Alfresco.

How do i expose this POJO on the alfresco tomcat server? Web app? etc.
Do I use web scripts to create the button next to each file in the directory?
Is this possible?
Has anyone done this?

Any direction would be of great help!!!!!

Thanks

[jpotts]

Just thought you should know this is already being developed by Alfresco. Here is a presentation that includes some discussion of the integration.

With that said, you asked about general approaches. I'd take your class that knows how to work with the Dropbox API and treat it like a service, similar to the NodeService, the TransformationService, etc. I'd probably wrap it with some Java code and a Spring config that would expose it as a root object in Alfresco server-side JavaScript. That way you can get to it from workflows and web scripts regardless of the language choice. Your class and any others you develop will be JAR'd up and placed in Alfresco's WEB-INF/lib.

You'll probably need a custom content model that keeps track of metadata specific to the integration. There might be settings that are global to the integration that you'll need to capture and persist somewhere and then each node that is being sync'd might also have metadata you want to track. For the latter, you'll model the metadata as one or more aspects and then dynamically add/remove those aspects to the nodes being sync'd as needed. If you need help creating custom content types, see this tutorial.

Then you've got to deal with the Share front-end. Here you'll extend the UI to add whatever UI actions you need and an indicator in the document library list. You can see examples of both of these types of customizations in this tutorial.

If you were creating this integration and sharing it with others, even internally, you'd be well-advised to use AMPs for both the repository and Share tier customizations. You can learn more about that here.

Hope that helps,

Jeff

[ggates1]

Jeff,

I saw that drop box presentation and was wondering if you knew when it would get released?  Our implementation of Alfresco is
based on the integration of drop box into Alfresco as our user base is used to using drop box. This presents a challenge for us
as we (IT) have no control of the documents that the users a sharing, after all they are company assets floating in space.  So for this reason we
need to roll out Alfresco to our users with the drop box integration.  I have to get my head around these concepts which at first glance
seems similar to Enterprise java beans located on the JNDI lookup directory, however, in this case on UDDI.  It's been a while since I have been active
in java so I am playing catch up.

Thanks for your help!  As Always!

[jottley]

Hi

We are super excited about our upcoming integration with Dropbox.  We have done some great work so far, but are still working out what features are most important for our first release.  So our target date is soon.  As with most things soon is always too late for some.  But we are working hard to get it out with the features that are needed/wanted for a first release.

Any feedback on what you'd expect it to do and what you'd want it to do would be great.

Jared

[ggates1]

Jared,

Believe me we are just as excited as you are about your integration with drop box.  We will definitely use it and would be willing to test this functionality
in it's early stages if you should need users to do so as we are pushing Alfresco.  To be clear this will be offered to community users as well correct?  According to the DevCon 2011presentation it seems that the integration will sync files automatically which is great!  A nice to have feature would be the ability to turn off sync and let users manually put/get files through a  user action for each file within the document library.   Will this will be an add on only for Alfresco 4.x?  Also how will we know when this is available?  Also when files sync for changed files will new versions be assigned?

Thanks!!!

[kirkokuev]

Can anyone give me a heads-up about dropbox integration? Was it implemented?
All I can see now is dead Dropbox connector on google code without downloads.

[jpotts]

This is it:
http://code.google.com/p/alfresco-dropbox-integration/source/browse/

You must check out and build the code yourself.

Jeff