Web project content not showing 'modified' with Web Services

[rodenbaugh]

Hi everyone,

I'm trying to upload content via the web services API (using CML constructs) and I have setup content inserts that will correctly populate a structure under a given web project.  Everything under the web project is populated via this upload, starting with the top-level directory that would live under ROOT.  Since it's created from scratch, I expected the web project to realize this content is unpublished in the sandbox…

What's not quite right is that when I go to the Web Project and look under User Sandboxes for the user that uploaded the content, the Modified Items drop-down shows NOTHING!

Adding to the weirdness, if I manually (from within the web browser) add a file to my project, and then delete it, THAT one file shows as modified and suddenly, I can upload the WHOLE project.

What flag/property/bit am I failing to modify when putting content into the web project via web services??  Clearly there's something that should trigger this, but it's not obvious what…

Thanks,
-Dave

[rodenbaugh]

Aha…Found the problem.

For anyone who is doing something similar, pay very close attention to the space in which you are uploading content.

I had set the target space to "avm://localhost" where localhost was my declared staged website…BIG mistake.  I was dumping the content into the staged area instead of passing it through the user sandbox.  Instead, I needed to post to: "avm://localhost–admin", which staged the content properly.

Furthermore, you MUST define the workflow to have this user (admin, or whatever you're using) as the Content Publisher.  If you don't the content is ignored.

Once you set these up and then upload content, everything shows as modified…

Hope this helps someone else,
-D

[kvc]

Thanks for posting the solution to the problem you raised … helpful to the Community.

As a clarifying note, Web Projects are centered around the concept of change management.  Changes are made *only* in user sandboxes, where they can be staged for test.  Then, they get promoted to Staging, where you can either have intermediating workflows or not.  Once promoted, changes are snapshoted (making a new version of Staging) and indexed (for search).  Multiple changes from different sandboxes can be aggregated into Staging, and specific versions of Staging can then be deployed to one or multiple production servers, be they file servers (for code or static sites) or Alfresco servers (for dynamic content).  Much more details on this can be found by reading the highlighted links in the Getting Started section of the main WCM wiki page:

http://wiki.alfresco.com/wiki/New_Web_Content_Management_Plan

Kevin