Repeating Attributes?

[rberg]

Hello,

Does alfresco provide the ability to have repeating attributes (Documentum lingo)?  Basically, can you have an attribute that contains multiple values? 

For example let's say you have an aspect called subscribeable. And you wanted an attribute subscribers that contained multiple e-mail addresses.

Currently the only way I can see to do this is to have a delimited string that is parsed manually.

Any thoughts or strategies?

-Ryan

[andy]

Hi

Yes, you can have multi-valued properties.

Start with:
http://www.alfresco.org/mediawiki/index.php/Security_and_Authentication
http://www.alfresco.org/mediawiki/index.php/Type_Mechanism

For example:

      <aspect name="cm:generalclassifiable">
         <title>General Classifiable</title>
         <parent>cm:classifiable</parent>
         <properties>
            <property name="cm:categories">
               <title>Categories</title>
               <type>d:category</type>
               <mandatory>false</mandatory>
               <multiple>true</multiple>
               <index enabled="true">
                  <atomic>true</atomic>
                  <stored>true</stored>
                  <tokenised>true</tokenised>
               </index>
            </property>         
         </properties>
      </aspect>
‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍

There are methods on DefaultTypeConverter.INSTANCE to support using multi-valued properties.

Regards

Andy

[rbramley]

Although if you go the multiple value route it gets stored as a Serialized set. The current hibernate configuration is limited to 16k for serialized values…

<property name="serializableValue" column="serializable_value" type="serializable" length="16384"/>
‍‍‍

Instead - the cm:subscribable aspect uses node associations to cmerson:

<aspect name="cm:subscribable">
         <associations>
            <association name="cm:subscribedBy">
               <source>
                  <mandatory>false</mandatory>
                  <many>true</many>
               </source>
               <target>
                  <class>cm:person</class>
                  <mandatory>false</mandatory>
                  <many>true</many>
               </target>
            </association>
         </associations>
      </aspect>‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍

Hope this helps!