Liferay 7 Eclipse IDE override default categories behaviour - liferay

I need to create a portlet in order to change the default category behaviour/interface in Liferay 7.
My objective is to duplicate assetcategory table, expand and change its columns, and use this new table as a reference for categories within Liferay backend.
Therefore there are three key points my portlet has to update:
The category organization UI to create/update category tables on
DB. I’m able to create a new Liferay module project (panel-app template) which can present the UI backend interface from the side menu and interact with the DB.
Override default category selection panel within web content
properties panel (metadata > category select). I can create a new
Liferay module project fragment to override the
com.liferay.asset.categories.selector.web, however I’ve noticed I can
select only one file path (eg. META-INF/resources/view.jsp)
Override default asset publisher filter behaviour in order to allow
my custom categories selection. I’ve not yet investigated this
point.
I’m currently stuck at point 2 because after creating a new Liferay module project fragment, set the target Host OSGI Bundle to com.liferay.asset.categories.selector.web (which I believe is the correct one, please correct me if it isn't) and selecting the overridden files as META-INF/resources/view.jsp, I can’t proceed to redraw the category selection interface.
Here my attempts:
Updating the code view.jsp (eg. adding some text string) I can correctly
see them in the portlet.
Removing/commenting all the code in view.jsp an error is shown:
Asset category selector is temporarily unavailable
Selecting all three files available to be overridden in the main
portlet wizard (META-INF/resources/view.jsp, init.jsp and
init-ext.jsp) and updating view.jsp (like the first example) nothing
happen in the portlet
Some screenshot below:
Case 1
Case 2
Case 3

I need to create a portlet in order to change the default category
behaviour/interface in Liferay 7. My objective is to duplicate
assetcategory table, expand and change its columns, and use this new
table as a reference for categories within Liferay backend.
Just this alone sounds like a humongous task, bigger than what would fit into a stackoverflow question.
AssetCategories are used in every single content type, e.g. WebContent, Blog Articles, Message Board Posts, Wiki Pages, Knowledgebase Articles etc.. Replacing such a vital component by your own implementation is something that will safely ruin your next upgrade experience, because there you'd have to do this again, bringing your code to whatever changes will be made in the next version. And this "upgrade" includes Security Patches.
Overall, your premise sounds to me like a x-y problem and I'd rather recommend that you step back from your intended solution and look for other options to meet your business requirements. There surely are some.
My recommendation: Rather add something to the platform than ripping out a very central and generic component, reimplementing it in a business-specific manner. If you need a different filtering than Asset Publisher provides: Build your own Asset Publisher and implement the business specific rules there. Or think again about organizing your content in a different way than you currently organize it.
Unless you're already a Liferay Core Developer and are asking for a hint on how to change the implementation for the next version. But your question history here doesn't look like it.

Related

Liferay: Dynamically populate 'select' structure field

I am building a liferay theme, which has two columns side by side. The right column is where the web contents will be displayed.
My implementation aims to build a menu (left column) that gets the titles from the web content titles and builds hierarchy (parent, child) based on a 'select' structure field that I added to each web content.
So far I was able to build this system using
Liferay.Service('/journalarticle/get-articles'...)
and some javascript coding.
Now the 'select' fields i use in my structure have predefined hard coded options.
How can i populate dynamically this option list so that whoever is managing content will automatically have all titles from all web contents available to choose a 'parent' from? So far a developer has to update this option list each time there is a new web content added.
#chadct : AFAIK Liferay not provide this default functionality, this is not good practice to populate dynamically value in structure field. But you wanted to achieve that functionality, then there are 4 solution :
Add one text field in structure which contains articleId of your parent web content.
You can add related article for that web content and write some sort of code to get article which consider as a parent of that web content.
Create Select DOM options form template which hold the list of article according to groupId and render on web content view mode, then you can select parent content from there and update content expando with articleId of parent webcontent. Remember this contains AJAX post request. and only show that control who is admin or loggedin user or depends on Role. Refer AJAX post calling
Hook edit_structure.jsp and add your logic here as you want.
Note : last one is worst but also a solution, Remember you need to modify your current solution.

Autofilling Part Values in an Orchard Controller

I'm very new to Orchard (and ASP.NET MVC) and I'm having some difficulty wrapping my head around how Orchard part properties can be automatically set in a controller. I have a "Gallery" content type, consisting of the stock Title, Container and Owner parts. I'm creating a controller with a Create method that hides all of the details of the Container part since I'm going to set the default page length, the item type, et cetera in the HttpPost version of the Create method. My problem is I don't know how to set those values on the http Post.
My general plan was as follows:
I created a CreateGalleryViewModel containing the title and admin username, both as a string. IN the view those two are represented as form fields. On the submit, I could run TryUpdateModel in the controller to update the CreateGalleryViewModel with the form values. But then how do I update the Part properties? I think I'm supposed to run IContentManager.UpdateEditor(, this) but I don't think this ca, work because I never ran IContentManager.BuildEditor in the first place. Here's where I'm stuck because I don't see how the content parts get validated and updated properly.
Am I looking at this at the wrong level of abstraction? How do I make a simplified editor for my Gallery content type?
What you basically need to know here is the following:
You can build the editor of a content item with IContentManager.BuildEditor()
You can updated an item's parts' values from the POST data with IContentManager.UpdateEditor()
You can also access parts by "casting" content items with the As() method (needs the Orchard.ContentManagement namespace).
When you're dealing with content items because of their dynamic nature it's rarely a good approach to create a view model where you recreate some of the parts' properties. If you have such static view models for what's contained in a content item then you'll miss the extensibility and flexibility that comes with Orchard's content model. E.g. if you add a new part to that content type since you're using a static view model the new part won't be handled.
For a complete example of how to manage content items from code, see the Training Demo module.

SharePoint 2010 - Customizing the rendering and behavior of a List field

In my SharePoint List, I have an "Employee" column that is a User type field. I would like to add some custom Business Logic to the processing of this field.
Currently, when the user adds a row, I check to see if the user is an Employee or a Manager and then change the behavior on this column accordingly. I do this by statically rendering the field in my custom "ListForm Rendering Template", just before my custom ListFieldIterator. I simply use a standard SharePoint FormField (and FormLabel) control. In the markup of the FormField control, I specify the FieldName (Employee) and an event handler for the Load event. In this Load event, I will check to see if the current user is an Employee or Manager (using two different SharePoint groups). If the user is an Employee I set the value of the field to the current user (this part works perfectly). I also want to change the field so it can't be modified. I thought I might be able to just change the ControlMode on the field (in the code of the OnLoad Event Handler) to Display, but for some reason this has no effect. The field still renders with the full, people picker editor. Am I not changing the fields control mode soon enough? Or is this simply not the correct approach? The other logic I want to put in is if the user is a Manager, I would like to allow that user to select the person from a list (SharePoint group) of Employees. It may be easier to just use the people picker and limit the selectable users to that group. (I think I can do this with the SelectionGroup property.) Although, it would be better if I could just provide a dropdownlist of users, which I could possibly do with a hidden dropdownlist that I would show and event handlers that I could use (handle event selectedindexchanged) to pull the value selected and populate the (now hidden) Employee (user) field. Does this approach make sense? Assuming all that will work, the real difficulty I am having is with changing the ControlMode (rendering) on the field (when the user is an employee) to a label or some kind of read only control, which is how that field renders when viewing the row, which is why I think if I can just trick the control into thinking it is in Display mode then it should work perfectly!
I am still learning SharePoint, but I am very proficient in ASP .Net. This is why I would like to keep my customizations in this Custom Rendering Template, using code behind and leverage my existing skill set as much as properly.
Any thoughts, opinions or advice? Does anyone know why I can't get the column to switch the "Control Mode"?
I do not think that I fully understand your scenario. Some code samples could help.
But anyway it sounds like you want some heavy customizations of the user field. In that case you might want to have a look at creating a custom field with all its advantages and disadvantages. Have a look at MSDN: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg132914.aspx
Another option might be - in case you do not want to re-use this column in many list definitions - that you can get away with your custom rendering template and create a custom create/edit form where you implement the specific edit behaviour for the field (plain ASP.NET with some SharePoint controls). Here is a nice walk-through on how to grab a custom edit form from SharePoint designer: http://community.bamboosolutions.com/blogs/sharepoint-2010/archive/2011/05/12/sharepoint-2010-cookbook-how-to-create-a-customized-list-edit-form-for-development-in-visual-studio-2010.aspx
I hope this helps. Kr., Bernd.

Create a list of pages in Orchard

Lets say for example, I have a list of products that each have it's own page... in what way can I create a single page that will list each product as it's contents as a list (with hyperlinks)? Not really sure how to do this directly in Orchard - or will I need to create a custom page / widget? Thanks for any help... new to Orchard and not sure how to tackle this.
You have a couple options. I believe the Orchard gallery at orchardproject.net has a module called Simple Commerce that may solve your problem. (it's simple so it might not)
(In the following section, I've tried to boldface the terminology words that are 1) are crucial to understanding how to use Orchard and 2) helpful in finding your way around the dashboard)
Another option may be first creating a Content Type--probably one named Product with some Fields describing an individual product. Price, SKU and description come to mind, but you'll be better able to describe your own products. Each Content Type in Orchard can be associated with any combination of Parts. You may have to research which ones you actually want for an individual product, but I'd recommend:
Body (this could replace the Description I suggested above) You could include any amount of HTML/script in this section to make your individual product pages look fancy!
Common (this has to be added when Containable is used)
Containable (this will allow the items to be listed)
Route (so you can link to a specific product)
This gives each product its own slug (URL)
Tags (to allow products to be categorized)
Now, you need to create a new List from the dashboard so you can display the products together (and inherit other features like pagination, etc). Be sure to select the Product Content Type in the Contains drop down list.
Then, you can start creating your Content (your Products) one by one. In the dashboard, click the new Product item and describe each new piece of Content.
Finally, you can link directly to this new List using the Products List's *slug*. You could (and might want to) add the Products List to your main navigation menu. Clicking the Products List and checking the "Show on main menu" box will automagically add a navigation button directly to this page. You could, of course, link to this List from anywhere using the slug (also found on the list's edit page)
This page, from the Orchard documentation pages describes more things you can do with a list of content like modifying the layout of the list, placing content fields in different places and even converting your products to widgets which you could use to display some promotional product offering in a special spot on your site.
I highly recommend reading through at least the documentation provided on the Orchard site to get a good grasp of what this CMS can do out of the box and what you would need to write custom code to accomplish (which you could do in this case, but Orchard can handle it out of the box)
Hope this helps!
Two ways to do this:
http://orchardproject.net/docs/Creating-lists.ashx and http://orchardproject.net/gallery/List/Modules/Orchard.Module.Contrib.Taxonomies

How to hide a custom field type from new column choices

I'm trying to figure out a clean way to hide a custom field type from the list of available columns when a user goes to add a new column to a list. I only want this field type to show up when a given feature has been activated (the feature could be site, web, or web app scoped for my purposes).
One theory (haven't had a chance to try implementing this yet) is that I could set all the ShowOnListAuthoringPages (and similar) properties to "false" in the fldtypes_myfield.xml file, then programmatically set this value to true when a given feature is activated.
In XML file, please set
<Field Name="UserCreatable">FALSE</Field>
I't work with me
Are you sure that you are able to see the Publishing Fields Type in the List Create Column Only with Publishing Infrastructure feature activated. I have a MOSS 2007 Server and I Create a Site Collection based on the Team Site (In this Publishing Infrastructure was not active) but still I was able to see the Rich HTML Fields in the Create Site Column Page. I doubt Publishing Infrastructure controls this function. Your option is good one for this, I would say.
Custom Field Types Features are per definition Farm Scoped, since Custom Field Types have to be deployed farm wide.
You cannot "hide" them from users. A field in a list is based on a field type (bool, user etc.). You CAN hide fields, not the base types. So if a user wishes to create an entirely new (site) column, he or she 'll be able to see that field type.
So, it does look like the only way to do really hide the field times is with attributes in the fldtypes_myfield.xml file. There are a series of properties that affect it's visibility described in this MSDN page. In my particular case I ended up just using the UserCreatable property and marking it as false. This pretty much means the field type won't show up in the UI anywhere, so you'll need to make a feature or some kind of list/library template that you deploy that makes use of the type. I guess this is an area we can hope for improvement on in SP 2010 (perhaps along with a scoping mechanism for event receivers so they don't have to be "global" in the farm).

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