Options seeing Alfresco repository from an external webapp

[erennion]

Hi everyone:

I've deployed Alfresco 2.0 and Liferay 4.2.1 (both in the same Tomcat instance), and I expect to show a list of stored documents in a portlet, so I need to access the Alfresco repository from Liferay.

I tried to retrieve the spring context bean manually (as it's explained in the Wiki's example), but it seems that Liferay cannot access Alfresco's context this way. So I need a different manner to connect both apps.

Now I consider te following ones (to tell the truth, I'm not sure if any of them is incorrect):

1º Try to put Alfresco's context as a cross-context (it can be checked in server.xml I think), and retrieve it from within the portlet next.

2º Access the repository via Alfresco JCR-RMI.

The point is that as I can see, in both solutions I have to perform some changes in the previous Alfresco / Liferay installation; and that's a little mess cause I had to make those changes in near 50 pcs.

So, does anybody know if there's any other way of accessing the repository, in which I only have to work within the portlet that I have to create? If not, which of the previous solutions do you recommend me?

Thanks in Advance:
                     Joaquín

[derek]

Hi,

The simplest will be to create your own service interface for the high-level functionality that you require.  The current HEAD code has a simple standalone application that calls Alfresco using RMI-exported services.

From the build environment, run ant -f continuous.xml distribute-bm-remote to build the application.  You can look at the target and the classes involved.  The services are exported by an extension config file bm-remote-loader-context.xml.sample.

The idea is simple.  You write a high-level service class that does the type of things your remote application needs and then export that service over RMI.  You'll need a service interface, an implementation class and a config file to Spring it all up.

Regards

[kevinr]

Another way would be to use WebScripts and access list of documents etc. via HTTP API (even thought it's the same server, that's fine).
http://wiki.alfresco.com/wiki/Web_Scripts

Kevin