Content Transformations on retrieval

[paulkeogh]

Hi,

My understanding is that the Alfresco content transformation engine is invoked when content is added to the repository.

Is there any framework for applying transformations on content retrieval ?

My use case is when there is a diverse user agent population (eg mobile devices) with a wide range of capabilities, transformations are usually required to support all user agents. Typically, converting from jpg to gif, from mp3 to amr etc etc.

Any thoughts ?

[rivetlogic]

I can think of two ways to handle this:
1. Prepare ahead of time
2. Do it on the fly

The first is the easier method, and can be implemented using Content Rules without customization. Let's take image content as an example: Assume you'd like to store images as large Jpegs in your system, but would like to make the images available at a much smaller resolution and in different formats like GIF and PNG. To do that, you can create a space that stores the big Jpegs and add a content rule that shrinks the image size, convert its format to GIF & PNG and move the converted images to a mobile-ready/gif & mobile-ready/png spaces. The content that gets used by the modbile devices can be downloaded from these spaces, and whenever new Jpegs come in, or old ones get updated, the content of the GIF/PNG will automatically get updated.

The second method involves customizing Alfresco to do content conversion on the fly. This can be done in a variety of ways depending on how the client(s) intend to download the content, and your ability to distinguish the type of the client so as to perform the appropriate conversion.

Hope this helps.

–Sumer