How to explore documents in Alfresco Share from an other web application

[progm]

Hi everyone,

I'm a part of a project that needs to explore documents in alfresco. Those documents should not be imported to alfresco server, but view them directly in alfresco like we explore any usual document on it.

Is there any way to do that please help me with it.

Thanks in advance.

[progm]

Can someone please help me 

[mehe]

I really don't understand you - Explore documents not imported to alfresco server but viewed in alfresco...

sorry, I don't get that one...

[progm]

The idea is to have Alfresco Share as front-end ( as client-side ) for my app. I already searched how Share communicates with Repository using REST APIs. And right now using CMIS I'm searching how to communicate Share (as a client-side) with my app (as a server-side) instead of Alfresco Repository. Is there some configuration to do, or an existant Share connector or I must develop a connector between Share and my app. Thank you very much for replying.

[mehe]

No, it’s not possible to use Share as frontend to a non-alfresco repo

[progm]

Why it's not possible, if Share can communicate with Repository via REST APIs and all ressources for this API is in web site of Alfresco, why we can't do the same thing and develop a custom connector for this manipulation with REST/CMIS API. Can you please explain to me how it's impossible, I feel like I'm missing something to understand. Thanks in advance Martin Ehe.

[afaust]

Technically, you can add "endpoints" to different HTTP based services via the share-config-custom.xml file (the "Remote" config section) and call these endpoints from web scripts using the "remote" script object.

What Martin is referring to is that it would require an immensely intensive refactoring of almost all web scripts that render components in Alfresco Share AND their accompanying client-side JavaScript code to make them use any custom endpoint. And this does not even account for the effort of providing near-identical endpoint operations in your server to make it work with the extreme assumptions that the UI is talking with an Alfresco Repository.

Share has never been designed to work as a frontend to other systems. You can access and aggregate data from other systems via the endpoints and expose that in custom pages or dashlets as "mashups", which was the design purpose behind the remote endpoints.

Also bear in mind that Share is essentially deprecated and slated to be discontinued sometime in the next couple of years. You would not want to base a new solution on something that fleeting.

[mehe]

like Axel said - it would be hard work to implement the same REST functions for your server-component. Also have in mind, that not all REST calls that are used by share are fully documented public APIs - so they could change in the next version without any notice. Have you looked at the new ADF (Angular Frontend-Toolkit for Alfresco)? It would be easier for you to write an "Explorer-App" based on Angular or React, than to adapt share as a frontend (which is based on older JS-libs). 

[progm]

Thank you very much Axel and Martin, your explanation was very helpful I understand very well now. So the solution is "endpoints" and dashlets. Another question please, is it possible to do some kind of link between Repository and my app server, as the goal to bring all documents from my app server to Alfresco Repository, and then explore them in Share since they are already in Repository, is it possible to do so ?