Best way to create / integrate a webapp?

[plautzer]

Hello,

I started using alfresco mainly for managing my documents and I would to like to extent it with some applications. I found some posts and tutorials but couldn’t get a satifiying answer to following 2 issues. So I hope u can help me out there.

1. Webform
I want to create a webapp where uses provide data thru a web form on a regular basis. The app should meet following requirements:
- page should be access only by users who have permission 
- users have only access to data of their user groups
- user can view and manipulate their data (simple CRUD)
- users will get an automatic reminder (workflow task) if they haven’t provided their data by a defined deadline
- admin can manually download all the data into an excel sheet (The sheet should be automatically stored to folder in alfresco)

I would like to use the user /group management of alfresco to control the access to the application and workflow system for escalation.

What would be the best/ easiest way to implement it. Ive done most of my work with PHP and only very little with Java.


2. Overview of document
Is there a way to print a meta data of documents (of a specific site). The data should be creator, folder, time created and so on.

Thx for any help in advance..,

Greetz
plautzer

[stevegreenbaum]

Here's one approach, but certainly there are numerous variations on a theme:


Webform - create web script to render and process the form data.  You'll have to develop the html for the form.  The web script function provide security as well to enforce which users can access this functionality.  It may also be possible, depending on your specific needs, that you don't need a separate html form and that the forms that can be generated in the workflow module are sufficient.

Workflow - Alfresco integrates nicely with jBPM workflow engine and it is included in the standard install.  You can create custom workflows that integrate with the Alfresco repository. Emails can be generated when a task is assigned to notify a user of a task.  Timers can also be configured. 

Setup Space (folder) - create a space and use built-in permissions functionality of Alfresco for controlling who can see/add/edit a document.  The Alfresco Explorer client provides this functionality.

Excel download - not sure exactly what data you want in Excel, but Alfresco integrates with the Office suite.  Depending on what you are looking for you may need to write a web script to extract data from the repository that is then imported to Excel.

And good news is that no Java coding is necessary to implement any of this.  Server-side Javascript is supported and I believe so is PHP, but never looked at PHP functionality.  Some customization may need Java skills, but just depends on the complexity of the problem you are trying to solve (e.g., heavy calculations or the need to support a high transaction volume could lead you to a Java implementation; custom actions or new transformation).

[plautzer]

Hi,

thx for the reply.. I looked into the web scripts and created a webform.
Now I want to retrieve and save the data from the user form from/to a database.

How can I define and access the DB?
Usally Js is clientside script language is that even possible?

greetz,
Plautzer

[stevegreenbaum]

Alfresco has implemented the Rhino Javascript engine on the server-side.  So all of your Alfresco repository access can be done within a web script using Javascript.  I think this is a great feature of Alfresco.  Take a look at the Javascript API -   http://wiki.alfresco.com/wiki/3.2_JavaScript_API

Defining the database (model) is done using XML files.   You can access the database using Lucene or Xpath and with recent releases CMIS – see the Javascript  api for details.  See ecmarchitect.com for tutorials.

There are examples in the wiki for retrieving data from a html form.

[plautzer]

thx for the info. Unfortunately I cant find the right article on ecmarchitect. Do u have a title oder url for me?

I additionally need all the information of the creator, creation_date, last_changed_date, documentsname… of the documents of a certain site or repostitory.
Is there a way to display and/or extract an overview of all those documents?

Greetz
Plautzer

[stevegreenbaum]

The tutorials are listed on the bottom right side of the page in the Features section.  Here is a link to the web script page - http://ecmarchitect.com/images/articles/alfresco-webscripts/web-script-article.pdf

All of the document properties that you are looking for can be extracted and displayed.  The best way to learn how to do this is to read all of the tutorials on ecmarchitect.  If you only need to see these properties, go to the Alfresco Explorer client, find the document you are interested in and then select the document detail action which will show you the default properties for the document.

[plautzer]

I am familiar with properties… I would like to display/ print / export alle the documents within a space and maybe even its spaces. So I guess there is no quick and easy to configure that in alfresco?!

Thx for the link. I am gonna check it out.