In this first installment I’d like to show how to create datalists and datalist items from Alfresco Repository Javascript which can be useful when you want to populate a site’s datalists automatically.

Using the space context to select the site

The first thing you should do in the Javascript Console is to select the space/folder the script is executed in. This automatically puts the node you have selected in a variable called “space”. In this example script we are selecting the Share site where the datalist shall be created. In my local installation I chose the site “jstest” as you can see in the screenshot.To make it even clearer which space my script is expecting I start by assigning it to a variable called “site”:

var site = space;

Now we have a variable site available pointing to the site where the datalist shall be created.

Preparing the site

The “datalists” container within a site may not exist. We need to make sure that it is available or create it if it is missing. Share usually creates this folder automatically when you create your first datalist but if you don’t have a list yet, it might be missing.

var dataLists = site.childByNamePath("dataLists");

if (!dataLists) {
  var dataLists = site.createNode("dataLists", "cm:folder");

  var dataListProps = new Array(1);
  dataListProps["st:componentId"] = "dataLists";
  dataLists.addAspect("st:siteContainer", dataListProps);
  dataLists.save();

  logger.log("Created new datalists folder.");'
}

Creating the datalist

Now let’s create a datalist. I chose the existing contacts datalist type for this example. You can have a look in the datalists model to see which types are available and which properties can be set on each type.  Usually datalists are created with cryptic UUID names (i.e. they don’t have names defined for them) but if you create them yourself you can give them any name you like so you are able to find them later on. The Share UI only displays the datalists title, the name doesn’t show up in Share. I am using “contactlist1” as the name for the new datalist:

var contactList = dataLists.childByNamePath("contactlist1");

if (!contactList) {
  var contactList = dataLists.createNode("contactlist1","dl:dataList");

  // tells Share which type of items to create
  contactList.properties["dl:dataListItemType"] = "dl:contact";
  contactList.save();

  var contactListProps = [];
  contactListProps["cm:title"] = "My Contacts";
  contactListProps["cm:description"] = "A contact list generated by a javascript.";
  contactList.addAspect("cm:titled", contactListProps);

  logger.log("Created contact datalist.");
}

Adding items

Now that we have created a datalist we are ready to place items in the datalist. Since we created a contacts list we need to place items of the type dl:contact in it. We basically create a new node, set the properties of the contact node and save it, that’s all.

var contact = contactList.createNode(null, "dl:contact")
contact.properties["dl:contactFirstName"] = "Florian";
contact.properties["dl:contactLastName"] = "Maul";
contact.properties["dl:contactEmail"] = "info@fme.de";
contact.properties["dl:contactCompany"] = "fme AG";
contact.properties["dl:contactJobTitle"] = "Senior Consultant";
contact.properties["dl:contactPhoneMobile"] = "not available";
contact.properties["dl:contactPhoneOffice"] = "not available";
contact.properties["dl:contactNotes"] = "Alfresco Expert";
contact.save();
logger.log("Created new contact: " + contact.nodeRef);

When you run the complete script you see that the contact list and one contact items are created. Naturally you can create multiple contact items of you like.

One use case for this technique could be to create a lot of items for performance testing during development or you could generate a Javascript file based on this template to migrate content to the datalists.

Wrapping up

Of course this script doesn’t need to run in the Javascript Console. You could also execute it using the Execte Script Action, my Scripts Bootstrap extension or a custom webscript. You just have to make sure you have the node of the site to start with.

Note that the logger.log() messages are printed to the output area. In the Javascript Console these are always displayed regardless of the log level of the ScriptLogger which normally controls the logger output to the Alfresco log file.

The main reason I’m writing this post though is, that I’d like to share how I integrated freemind mindmaps into Alfresco. The freemind mindmaps are .mm-files which can already be stored in alfresco but are "unknown binary" files. What we have to do is tell alfresco what .mm-files are by defining them as mime-types. The Alfresco wiki describes how to add a mime-type so I did this accordingly:

The result of including the preceding xml files as tomcat\shared\classes\alfresco\mimetype\mimetype-custom-extensions.xml is that the new content type Freemind appears in the Add Content Dialog.

The next step would be adding the icons for the freemind documents. To achieve this you simply have to copy a file named mm.gif into the alfresco/images/filetypes (16×16 pixels) and alfresco/images/filetypes32 (32×32 pixels) folder in the web application. The new file is automatically recognized after a restart of the web-app and the new icon is available.

Then I thought it would be nifty to have a preview of the mindmap right in the web interface. Fortunately freemind provides a java applet and a flash viewer. I decided to use the flash viewer and found the alfresco templates as a extremely easily way to integrate custom display logic. For my viewer I would only have to include the html code to open the flash object in a freemaker template. Alfresco provides a template directory within the data dictionary (a space in the repository) where I included the following code in the file freemind.fts:

This is basically the code that freemind generates when exporting to flash. More information on templates can also be found in the alfresco wiki in the Template Guide. The template can be easily edited right from the web interface:

This templates refers to a javascript and the flash viewer which I stored in the web application under alfresco/custom/freemind. The fixed height of 500px, which I included, is not the best to solution but is needed to prevent the window from collapsing to a very small area.

Using this template as a custom view in the details page of the mindmap file, which we added earlier, produces this interactive preview of the mindmap:

Using "Preview in Template" the viewer can also be used without the menu on the right:

This little customization has took me not much longer than writing this post which is pretty amazing. Most if the impressiveness of the result is due to the ready-to-use functionality of the freemind flash viewer though

Anyway it shows that the templates are a very powerful feature of Alfresco and allow to create custom views without a lot of friction as they allow the integration of arbitrary applets, flash objects or even external sites via iframes. For now I’m pretty happy with alfresco and look into deploying it more solidly on my home-server and look into backup options.

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