When we code our Region Templates, one of the most frequent questions that arises is this:

How can I get a particular metadata field associated with the datafile I am trying to display?

The answer is straight forward:

Make an IdcService call to DOC_INFO and then iterate over the metadata.

This could be easily achieved by using the Site Studio <wcm:metadata> Tag. The only problem here is that if you follow the example from the documentation, then you would have to use a for-each construct to get to your metadata:

<wcm:metadata contentID="${wcmContext.placeholder.dataFile}" var="metadata"/>
 <c:forEach var="metadatarow" items="${metadata.resultSets.DOC_INFO.rows}">
 <h5>${metadatarow.dDocTitle}</h5>
 </c:forEach>

Seems a bit clunky, doesn’t it?

Luckily, there is a more convenient way of getting the desired effect without needing extra tags, and honestly, it just makes more sense:

<wcm:metadata contentID="${wcmContext.placeholder.dataFile}" var="metadata"/>
 <h5>${metadata.resultSets.DOC_INFO.rows[0].dDocTitle}</h5>

With this approach, you make your Region Templates smaller in size and make your code look logically appealing.

Happy coding.

ServiceHandlers always extend the ServiceHandler class. So within a custom ServiceHandler Java class, you have access to the Service object using the variable m_service. From this Service object, you can get a ServiceRequestImplementor object: m_service.getRequestImplementor(). With the ServiceRequestImplementor object, you can execute services with a few different methods (executeSubServiceCode, executeSafeServiceInNewContext, executeServiceEx, executeServiceDirect, executeServiceTopLevelSimple). I typically tend to use the executeServiceTopLevelSimple method.

The executeServiceTopLevelSimple method signature looks like the following: public void executeServiceTopLevelSimple(DataBinder binder, String serviceName, UserData userData) {}.

Below is a sample method I use to wrap the executeServiceTopLevelSimple method:

/**
* This method executes a service.
* @throws ServiceException
*/
private void executeService(final String DataBinder serviceBinder, final String serviceName) throws ServiceException {
     traceVerbose("Start executeService");
     try {
          trace("Calling service " + serviceName + ": " + serviceBinder.getLocalData().toString());           // Execute service
          m_service.getRequestImplementor().executeServiceTopLevelSimple(serviceBinder, serviceName, m_service.getUserData());
          trace("Finished calling service");
     } catch (final DataException e) {
          trace("Something went wrong executing service " + serviceName);
          e.printStackTrace(System.out);
          throw new ServiceException("Something went wrong executing service " + serviceName, e);
     } finally {
          traceVerbose("End executeService");
     }
}

Service Handlers

Service Handlers are a mechanism that allows us to add new services or modify existing services by using  Java.

Multiple Service Handlers could contain the same Java method, but the Content Server would only execute the one that is contained within the Service Handler that has the lowest Search Order. The Search Order is defined during the creation of the configuration table. The configuration table is a table that exposes your custom code to the Content Server.

Service Handlers could be chained/put-in-place to be executed:

• Instead of new service actions:
  • Create a Service Handler with a lower Search Order.
• Before existing service actions:
  • Create a Service Handler with a lower Search Order,
  • Make a call to the same method after your custom java code:

… custom java code …
m_service.doCodeEx(“<sameMethodName>”, this);

• After existing service actions:
  • Create a Service Handler with a lower Search Order,
  • Make a call to the same method before your custom java code:

m_service.doCodeEx(“<sameMethodName>”, this);
… custom java code …

Java Filters

Java Filters is an event subscription mechanism through which developers can subscribe to the various events that occur within the Content Server and execute custom Java code.

During the operation of Content Server, there are various events that constantly being fired up. The developer can subscribe to these events and alter the behavior of Content Server. When the desired event would occur the control would be passed to the subscribers of the event and the custom java code could be executed. The Content Server then expects a result of the custom code execution.  The results are pretty straight forward:

• CONTINUE – informs Content Server that everything went accordingly;
• FINISHED – informs Content Server to stop running any other filters with the similar name;
• ABORT – informs Content Server to halt execution of the current process.

When to Use Service Handlers versus Java Filters

Java Filters is the least-intrusive and easiest way to customize the behavior of Content Server with Java, whereas Service Handlers require more thorough understanding of the actions that need to be customized.

Java Filters is the preferred and most commonly used way of customization, but it is limited to the existing set of filters within the Content Server. So, if there is no defined filter to which you can subscribe, then you can create your own custom component that uses Service Handlers to customize the behavior.

1. Login or switch to the root user
2. Create a file named google.repo in the /etc/yum.repos.d dirctory
3. Add the appropriate segment to your new google.repo file
   • 32 bit
     

     [google-chrome]
     name=google-chrome – 32-bit
     baseurl=http://dl.google.com/linux/chrome/rpm/stable/i386
     enabled=1
     gpgcheck=1
     gpgkey=https://dl-ssl.google.com/linux
     linux_signing_key.pub
     

   • 64 bit
     

     [google-chrome]
     name=google-chrome – 64-bit
     baseurl=http://dl.google.com/linux/chrome/rpm/stable/x86_64
     enabled=1
     gpgcheck=1
     gpgkey=https://dl-ssl.google.com/linux/linux_signing_key.pub
     

4. yum install google-chrome-stable

• Adding a new website section (service SS_ADD_NODE)
• Switching content on a region marker in Site Studio contribution mode (service SS_SWITCH_REGION_ASSOCIATION)
• Changing the property of a website section (service SS_SET_NODE_PROPERTY)

The service SS_COMMIT_SITE_CHANGES can, “Be run at any time to commit changes on demand”. The only required parameter is siteId. “The user executing this service must have write access to the project file to execute the service.”

There is another configuration flag SSAutoCheckinBusyTimeout (integer value in seconds which defaults to 30) that is, “Used to set the minimum time duration (in seconds) before the auto check-in mechanism attempts a check-in of a project file. This configuration flag prevents two nodes from trying to check the project file in at the same time”. The auto check-in behavior appears to use service CHECKIN_ARCHIVE and with the default time of 10 minutes, this should handle any issues that might come up with the release date debacle.

The undocumented configuration flag SSOverwriteProjectsUponCheckin (boolean value which defaults to false) controls whether the latest project file revision is overwritten. So, out of the box, project file auto check-ins stack revisions one on top of the other, instead of simply overwriting the latest revision. This is, is in my opinion, a good thing.

Oracle recently released Patch Set 5 for Fusion Middleware.  This includes my primary area of interest WebCenter Content.  This technically started rolling out to Oracle eDelivery and then OTN sometime on February 22nd, 2012.  I was a little late to the blogging game so instead of “announcing” the release let’s do a quick link roundup about this release from some of my favorite community members!  While this list isn’t comprehensive, it does come from a lot of people that have taught me a lot down the years so add them to your blog roll if you haven’t already.

Link Round-Up

1. One of my friends, John Sim might have been the first to point out the release availability.  He also has a great rundown of the products included in the release
2. Ryan has some handy links and also points out that the documentation has been updated
3. Bex runs down the patch sets you may need to navigate if you plan to upgrade your now out-of-date UCM instance using his recently setup shortcuts for Oracle Patches
4. The Official WebCenter Content Blog lists a host of new features around User Engagement, Content Enabling Applications and Infrastructure
5. Webmonkey really elaborates on the new Folders Component (This one is sometimes referred to as Framework Folders while the older one was called Folders_g)
6. And finally, on a separate note, but still related to PS5 note, Shay has a really nifty video showing some of the iPad related ADF stuff that’s new in JDeveloper/ADF for PS5
7. Yannick Ongena has a good review with information on the new RIDC connection in JDeveloper
8. The folks at AMIS also have a good link roundup

Ok, so these guys are a hard act to follow.  What can I say/do that they didn’t cover?  Only thing I can think about are some screenshots!  Once we got all the final bits downloaded (caution: that part takes a while if you want it all) we got a VM put together pronto and here’s some of the things we thought were interesting.

JDeveloper

First up, JDeveloper PS5 with Site Studio for External Applications (SSXA).  Notice in the shot below there is a dedicated RIDC connection you can now add to projects.  This could be handy for all kinds of things!

Also in JDevleoper PS5 (and I think it acts this way in the 11gR2 releases as well) you can now set the default built-in WebLogic Domain password to something you know and will remember when you first start the integrated server.  It used to be that the default password for the integrated server was weblogic1 and this was a major issue for those first setting out to use the product.  New users would be very frustrated trying to find out why they couldn’t login as weblogic user to test that first site they tried to build.  Love this!

Branding

Having booted up the integrated WebLogic server we see our contribution mode banner is now updated with the new product branding (WebCenter Content).  This is also updated in the content server user interface as well.

Out-of-the-box Assets

During the setup of our sandbox we obviously enabled Site Studio and SSXA.  It appears as though those components now ship with all the sample Custom Element Forms right from the start.  No more loading up the Site Studio Samples site from OTN just to grab these Custom Element Forms!  This made my day.

Folders and Desktop Integration

Of all the updates the Framework Folders and Desktop Integration Suite (DIS) changes are my favorite so far.  As mentioned before, Webmonkey runs down a lot of the features for us, but let’s see what it looks like.  One thing I want to point out though is that DIS works with Framework Folders and that Framework Folders overcomes a lot of the performance problems people used to experience with “Folders” in the past (previously called Contribution Folders).  This bears repeating because it opens a lot of doors and numerous customers have been waiting on these two features to converge.

Once you have DIS installed you’ll see an icon on the desktop (similar to how DIS has always worked) and you’ll double click that to open Windows Explorer which now has a “WebCenter Content Servers” node.  Clicking that node will show you the list of servers you have configured for your desktop (initially it will be blank, right click the blank white area and select Add Server).

If you have Rules and Profiles (custom check-in screens, etc.) enabled you’ll be able to use them in a drag and drop fashion right from your desktop by opening the “New Check-In” node.

1. Delete the domain folder (meaning base_domain) under %WL_HOME%/user_projects/domains
2. Delete the domain folder (meaning base_domain) under %WL_HOME%/user_projects/apps
3. Remove any references to the domain in the %WL_HOME%/domain-registry.xml file
4. Remove any references to the domain in the file WL_HOME/common/nodemanager/nodemanager.domains
5. Remove any schema/database associated with the domain

FileStoreProvider fileStoreProvider = DirectoryLocator.m_fileStore;

DirectoryLocator has several static methods that can get paths within the filestore to places such as weblayout directory, the vault directory, the temporary directory, the provider directory, etc. It can provide you a String path to almost any directory you want.

IdcFileDescriptor is a class that can provide the pathing to files. From a FileStoreProvider, we can create an IdcFileDescriptor.

IdcFileDescriptor idcFileDescriptor = fileStoreProvider.createDescriptor(binder, null, context);

The first parameter is a DataBinder. This is where the paremeters that are needed to build the path to the file are set. The second parameter is not needed and can be set to null. The third parameter is the ExecutionContext.

The required parameters that need to be in the DataBinder are “RenditionId”, “dDocName”, “dDocType”, “dRevLabel”, “dSecurityGroup”, “dDocAccount”, “dID”, and “dExtension”. RenditionId should be set to “primaryFile” for the primary file and “web” for the alternateFile.

Fortunately, a lot of the time most of these required parameters are already in your the original DataBinder. If you are missing some parameters you should be able to make a service call to DOC_INFO to get a ResultSet which contains all of the necessary parameters. You can then dump these parameters into a new DataBinder and feed it to the createDescriptor method call.

The file descriptor that comes back will give you something like this:

idcFileDescriptor: intradoc.filestore.BasicIdcFileDescriptor{dWebExtension=xml, dID=80, RenditionId.path=primaryFile, dStatus=RELEASED, StorageClass=vault, RenditionId=primaryFile, dSecurityGroup=Public, dDocType=Web, dOriginalName=jh000035.xml, dExtension=xml, uniqueId=c:/oracle/ucm/server/vault/web/80.xml, fileNamePrefix=null, dReleaseState=Y, dDocAccount=, path=c:/oracle/ucm/server/vault/web/80.xml, dDocName=JH000035, dRevLabel=27, dRenditionId=primaryFile}

To get the path to the file, do the following:

fileStoreProvider.forceToFilesystemPath(idcFileDescriptor, null, context);
String filePath = fileStoreProvider.getFilesystemPath(idcFileDescriptor, context);

You can of course turn this file path into a Java object by using:

File myFile = new File(filePath);

One of the often used by seldom explained parts of Profiles is something called Side Effects.  You will find the Side Effects tab on the Add/Edit Activation Conditions screen and it primarily allows you to accomplish two things:

1. Add name/value pairs as IdocScript that will then get pushed to local data if the activation condition is true.
2. Add custom IdocScript to a rule that is only evaluated if the activation condition is true and this can include logic like if and else statements or loops.  Basically all IdocScript is possible here (though all of it may or may not be useful).  As such, once a rule is activated, you can include logic, use includes from a component, etc.

What specifically might one use Side Effects for?  For a simple example let’s pretend we have a profile for some scanned content.  This content is checked in as an image based PDF (no OCR, no searchable text).  Your profile should not display the full text search box in this case.  There is no full text to be searched.  You can accomplish this with a Side Effect in your profile:

<$SearchEngineName="DATABASE.METADATA"$>

Let’s take another example.  Perhaps on the check-in page you want the alternate file field to be removed.  You could go into config.cfg and add this setting, but it would be universal.  More likely you want this to happen in a specific, conditional context.  Try adding this as a Side Effect to your rule:

<$suppressAlternateFile="1"$>

Want more examples of Profiles, Rules and Side Effects? See below:

1. Using Rules & Profiles To Drive Custom Pages
2. Suppressing Alternate File
3. Thumbnail search in Content Server
4. Thumbnail search in Content Server #2
5. Hiding the Primary File field in UCM
6. Metadata field tool tips

In short, 12c looks neat and there looks to be a lot of new features but those toys are not currently part of our playground.