To be specific, I'm going to use Orchard CMS as a back-end for content editors for an existing website.
My website is too complicated to wrap it into an Orchard custom Module, so I decided to use stand-alone instance of Orchard as backend, and query and show content items manually in the code of my side.
I want to find the way how I could get content items from Orchard using it's API.
Here is some pseudocode I want to achieve:
// somewhere in my site, not in the Orchard application
IOrchardServices orchardFacade = CreateOrchardSystemSomeWay();
IContentManager contentManager = orchardFacade.ContentManager;
var myNeededItems = contentManager.Query("MyContenItemType").ToList();
I have troubles with the implementation of CreateOrchardtSystemSomeWay.
Did anyone try to implement such a way of accessing Orchard CMS data?
Another alternative is to use the database directly, but it would not be very nice approach.
The best bet would be to look at how the Orchard command line instance spins up and try to copy what it is doing. You have full access to the content from the command line, so if you could reproduce how it works somewhat you may be able to pull it off.
I havent attempted to do this, but the way I thought I would have done this if I tried would be to create an abstraction between Orchard and your system through a service like WCF, some sort of anti corruption layer.
Related
I find that Liferay concepts are quite confusing.
When I add new items, I don't know what is the best to choose:
Use the web content concept with template and structure
Use the dynamic list records
Use a specific model (using service builder).
All of these are really similars and can achieve same goals.
Have you got any clue or advice on what concept to choose when you develop some new features in Liferay?
You should use the components in this way :
Web Content : Web contents provide convenient way to create, update, view, modify, create RSS feeds, customize the content of the web site. It is one of the main component of the Liferay CMS. You should use web content when,
You have static content and want to show to the site.
You have specific structure of the content (like content with an inline image and a document link), then please use web content with the structure and template
You want to use ready to use content portlets ( web content list, web content display, web content search) instead of creating new set of portlets for your own type.
After all this, Liferay provides customization of web contents by allowing user to add new content type, creating rss feeds, structures, templates, ready workflow, content type roles etc.
Dynamic List : Consider dynamic list as a database with display functionality. Here, you can create a custom type of data and provide display functionality. If you have any requirement like user can create his/her own type of list maintain them, then go for it.
Custom Portlet : If your requirement is very case/scenario specific that you cannot achieve using list or web content or any other Liferay portlets (blogs, wiki, knowledge based articles etc) then go for custom portlet, here please remember, that at every liferay upgrade, you need to review the portlet and update the code accordingly in case of any API change or something. For OOB portlets, Liferay takes care of it.
Hope this helps!
It deends on what you want to have and how much control you want to have over your code.
To make simplistic application use web content concept with template
and structure.(need not to know technologies)
-To make some complex applications use dynamic list records
To make extremely complex applications and have full control over the flow use liferay service builder.(need t be a expert java programmer)
Hope that helps :)
I want to create a custom new item page for sharepoint but there are two approached that I
can use and I want to share your experience in determining which is better.
The first: is to create a page in a library then create a C# library project to handle
the events of the controls on the page.
The second: is to define a feature of the content type of my list and specify the new
item form to be my custom form, then create a website containing the custom form and put
this site at the layouts folder.
for me the first approach is fine but the problem is that a user may access the default
sharepoint new item form which I don't want to happen.
but I don't like the idea of placing the form in a library on the site.
so which is better in your opinion ?
thanks
i suggest you to go with your second approach ...
Create a completely new feature that allows you add your functionalty of page creation and any customization realted to that and deploy this one to the 12 hive features folder as a new feature and every time you want have such a page created you can you this template and create the page...
Well, frankly, I'm confused by both of your suggestions.
I don't see how the first one would ever work.
And the second one; you don't "put sites in the layouts folder".
Here's what I would suggest you to do:
Download and install the WSS Extensions for Visual Studio.
Create a List Definition using these new templates.
Copy the NewForm.aspx from the 12 hive and Customize it.
Download and install the WSP Builder from Codeplex.com
Add your custom list definitions and files to a new Feature project in WSP Builder.
Package the Feature up to a .wsp using WSP Builder and you are good to go.
Your custom page(s) should be placed in your custom folders in my opinion.
Hope this helps.
Your concern in the first approach is that people will still be able to access the default form. If you are not opposed to using a custom control template for a content type definition, I recommend creating a very simple redirect control template and assigning it to the content type's "New Form". Such a control template need only contain one custom control, which has an OnInit or OnLoad method that contains little more than a Page.Response.Redirect call. Make that redirect point to the page you create in your first approach, and now whenever anyone tries to access the default new form for that content type, they will instead be directed to your custom page with all of your custom code. It is perhaps a bit of a hack, but it's definitely functional.
Or at least could anybody point me to docs about its crazy proprietary url parameters and html field name obfuscation? I can only suppose this is caused by SharePoint...
The main problem is, given a start page built with SharePoint, I can't recreate a form post with a programmative client because:
field names vary, they are appended with a some sort of id, hash, whatever (I think session.wise? Not sure)
tracing HTTP traffic on my side, I see the HTTP request is packed with strange parameters like __REQUESTDIGEST, __VIEWSTATE, and many others
Is this an intentional protection device put up by SharePoint? Which is the underlying architecture and which objects are involved (script callbacks, ... )?
(BTW, I'm not doing anything evil, just trying to extract public government data from a website).
Thanks.
SharePoint is nothing more than an ASP.NET Application, SharePoint completely Built on top of ASP.NET 2.0.
Being said that __VIEWSTATE is nothing but a Hidden Field that has the View State Information
Coming to __REQUESTDIGEST this is an Intentional Protection, this carries some sort of
securito validation which is called FormDigest
And finally to answer your Question, You will not be able to guess field and stuffs unless you have control to change the sourcecode of the application. Reason why the Name of the fields looks like obfuscated is because those controls are not handwritten but generated by the Code of ASP.NET Engine and parser, Reason field having such a name called Naming Container
One suggestion I would say is that, rather than trying to scraping the screen data, you can try alternate approaches, like each of the List in the SharePoint has the XML Feed inbuilt,try to consume it, if you have access to the site, try to retrieve the information using export to excel etc.
In addition to RSS, SharePoint also has a Web Services interface that you can use to get at and interact with data stored in SharePoint in a programatic way.
I have a sharepoint list with several views. I can modify the view pages (such as AllItems.aspx) via the sharepoint designer. However I would prefer to modify the underlying template instead.
Now I could directly modify the default view page template located in templates\pages\viewpage.aspx but this would affect the whole sharepoint installation.
I would rather make a copy of this template and make my list (or views) point to it. Is there a way I can accomplish this?
Note: The list/views were created via the Web UI without any custom XML.
Check out this blog:
http://weblogs.asp.net/soever/archive/2006/11/11/SharePoint-Solution-Generator-2D00-part-1_3A00_-create-a-site-definition-from-an-existing-site.aspx
Basically, use the sharepoint solution generator to create a VS solution of your SharePoint list. The solution will contain a file called schema.xml that defines the list and associated views. You can then customize the aspx pages like viewlist.aspx and point the schema at your custom pages. When you deploy the solution/feature it will deploy your custom pages with it.
There's really a wealth of info out on the internets, it's just difficult to find when you don't know what you're looking for. But this should get you started in the right direction.
Also, in my experience, once you create the solution you should port it (read: copy teh contents) into an STSDEV project. STSDEV really shows you what's happening behind the scenes, whereas the other VS tools for SP development can do some hand-waving magic which will leave you in the dark when things go wrong. Just my 2 cents.
I've built a web part for Sharepoint that retrieves data from an external service. I'd like to display the items in a way that's UI-compatible with Sharepoint (fits in with its surroundings.)
I'm aware of the "DataFormWebPart" but was unable to get one working properly. It requires a valid DataSource and I was unable to build one from the results of a web service call... Part of the problem is that my web service wrappers don't expose the XML return info, rather I have a bunch of deserialized objects. There doesn't seem to be an easy way to turn actual objects into a datasource, or populate a "generic" datasource from object data.
I could use an SPGridView to get the same UI, but the grid control doesn't have much in the way of smarts -and- it forces every field into its own column. I'd prefer to render each list item as a single cell with complex rendering (for instance the way that StackOverflow shows its lists of questions.) I'd also like to get as much of the Sharepoint-standard UI as possible, such as the sorting, filtering, and paging controls.
So, first: Has anyone here written a Sharepoint control that does this, and if so do you have sample code to share? If not: am I overlooking some useful control, whether MS-supplied or available in an external library?
Thanks!
Steve
Sharepoint: Best way to display lists
of non-Sharepoint content with
“compatible” UI?
Take a look at the built in sharepoint web controls:
Microsoft.SharePoint.WebControls Namespace
It contains all the controls used in sharepoint. I'd tell you more, but the documentation is very thorough.
Problem with SharePoint is that there are a bunch of different ways to do this. If your data is not changing too often and is not overly large it may be worth considering entering it into a list for display.
If you have the Enterprise licence it may be worth getting your data into the BDC and using it there.
you may have to convert the objects into xml or use the serialised objects with the XML webpart for display. This still has the issue of custom rendering using XSLT.
Here's a great article that explains how to configure BDC connections to web services using the BDC Definition Editor:
Creating a Web Service Connection by Using the Business Data Catalog Definition Editor
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb737887.aspx
The best way to do this IMO is to make a Web Part. As a Web Part the UI will be automatically rendered to be the same as the theme the site is using (unless you override it) and it will be able to be placed anywhere by anyone with admin privileges.
Tutorial on making a Web Part
Tutorial on packaging and deploying a Web Part
Example Web Part Source Code
You could create a custom web part and use an SPGridView. You say you don't like it, because it forces every field into its own column, but that's not true. You can create a template (ITemplate) for every column and fully customize what's shown inside it, just like you would using a normal ASP.Net GridView. Using this approach I've added the little "New" images right next to a list item's Title, just like SharePoint does itself.