There is a datasource for Alfresco / CMIS repository ?

Vaadin 6 / 7 / 8 Framework Data Binding
1

Hi all,

Please, there is some kind of interface to use Alfresco and/or CMIS repository as datasource for a table view in Vaadin ?

I need to list files from a Alfresco or CMIS repository…

Thank you for any help or suggest !

Ivano

2

Hi Ivano,

Ever found an answer to your question ? I’m considering using Vaadin to build a portlet connecting to Alfresco, so any help on that would be appreciated :slight_smile:

Thanks

Thibault

3

I believe Alfresco is using standard JCR APIs (JSR-170), so you could implement a JCR container. There does not seem to be one in the directory, but you could possibly use
the Lazy Query Container add-on
 as a basis and add the JCR access and hierarchy support if needed. There are examples of JCR access e.g. in
Alfresco wiki
.

I think it should be easy to create a simple non-hierarchical read-only container, although having a full JCR container might require quite a bit more work and thinking about the APIs carefully. It would be nice to have a JCR container as an add-on in the directory, though.

4

If your use-case is just embedding a vaadin application on a Alfresco CMS generated page, you might want to take a look of the
Embedding chapter in Book of Vaadin
 and in case you are running Vaadin app in a different server, take a look of the just released
Vaadin XS Addon
.

5

Hello all,

We’ve used CMIS as part of a larger project to expose certain Alfresco functionality to Vaadin apps, and have recently released a [http://code.google.com/p/vaadin-cmis/ project]
that offers direct access to Alfresco over CMIS from within vaadin.

I haven’t had time yet to get it into the directory, but it can be easily built from scratch, and has a decent demo app that runs against any vanilla 3.4 or recent community 3.x version.

Note, the Container and associated tooling is fully read-write enabled, but we haven’t implemented Container.Hierarchical because of the high likelihood that any given Alfresco custom content model (or standard one, for that matter) is meant to be instantiated as part of a tree of heterogeneous types.

This clashes with (my best understanding) Vaadin’s expectation that all Items managed by a Container expose the same set of (available) properties.

IOW, one is likely to encounter the following in any practical content repository:

Types/Aspects
:

[i]
ns1:typeA
[/i]
 - ns1:prop1
 - ns1:prop2
 - aspectns:aspectprop1
[i]
ns2:typeB
[/i]
 - ns2:prop1
 - ns2:prop2
 - aspectns:aspectprop1


Instance hierarchy


ns1:typeA / Instance-1
 - ns1:prop1: something
 - ns2:prop2: something else
 - children[]
   - ns2:typeB / Instance-2
     - ns2:prop1
     - ns2:prop2
...

We’ve modeled things such that, in effect, every cmis:folder (or descendant) is managed (if and as requested by app code) by one instance of CmisContainer per CMIS object type (i.e. types stored in that folder) per application instance. CmisContainer is CMIS-type-aware, so you can tell it that you want it to manage any node type (or all node types) for its folder.

The rub, of course, is that Container.Hierarchical.getChildren() called on the Container for ns:typeA / Instance-1, if made hierarchical, is going to return objects of a different type than getItem() called on the same Container instance. This would restrict the properties exposed by each Item retrieved to only those properties common to the underlying base CMIS class (if one exists).

Would love 1) any feedback you all may have about whether or not Container.Hierarchical makes sense given Alfresco’s heterogeneously typed content hierarchies, and 2) any feedback on the implementation or features you’d like to see - please give it a whirl if you need Vaadin and Alfresco to talk.

Thanks,
Aaron