WCM Solutions with Drupal and Alfresco

Wednesday 7th March 2012 With Ian Norton and Jeff Potts

About Ian Norton

•  8 Years content management experience."

•  Alfresco & Drupal."

•  Created the Drupal CMIS Views module."

Introduction •  Why would you integrate?"•  Integration considerations."•  User management."•  Integration options."•  The Alfresco Partner site & CMIS Views"•  How it works."•  Questions and answers."

Why would you want to integrate?

An integrated solution provides: •  Document management."•  Web presentation management."•  Seamless presentation of documents in the web

browser."

Integration considerations."

Push!•  Drupal treated as a deployment target (Richard

McKnight has built this in the AVM)."Pull!•  The CMIS Module uses a pull mechanism."•  CMIS Sync actually pulls the content and creates a

copy in Drupal."•  Some of the other modules just pull a CMIS folder

object and display them."

User Management"

•  Consider User Management Carefully."•  Do you want your users to be authenticated against

Alfresco when they login to Drupal?"•  Consider ‘safe’ folders in Alfresco that are accessible

with a generic ‘drupal’ user.""

Integration options."

PHP CMIS Wrapper •  Written by Richard McKnight."•  Contributed to Apache Chemistry."•  Used by Drupal, Wordpress, SugarCRM."•  http://chemistry.apache.org/php/phpclient.html"""

Integration options."

Drupal Alfresco Project •  Drupal 6"•  Works with Alfresco 2.x & 3.x"•  Uses SOAP"•  http://drupal.org/project/alfresco""

Integration options."

Integration options."

Canopy: A Drupal / Alfresco Integrated Solution •  Web Services, REST API’s, CMIS"•  Create pages in Drupal, workflow in Alfresco."•  Two way process, create in Alfresco or Drupal."•  Good for advanced workflow + publishing directly from

Alfresco"•  http://www.appnovation.com/canopy/"

Integration options."

Drupal CMIS API •  Query, Browse & Sync modules."•  Good for managing documents in Alfresco and then

surfacing them in Drupal."•  Ideal platform to build on."•  Richard McKnight’s CMIS PHP Wrapper."•  Used by 277 sites."•  http://drupal.org/project/cmis"

Drupal CMIS API

$conf['cmis_repositories'] = array(! 'default' => array (! 'user' => 'admin', ! 'password' => 'admin', ! 'url' => 'http://localhost:8080/alfresco/service/cmis'! )!);!

Integration options."

Drupal CMIS Views •  Built for Alfresco Team later extended."•  Takes a folder path and returns a PHP object."•  Allows blocks of CMIS content to be themed by Drupal."•  Built on the Drupal CMIS API."•  Used on Alfresco Team, Partners and forthcoming

dotcom."•  http://drupal.org/project/cmis_views"

Introducing CMIS Views

Demo time

•  Uploading from Drupal via CMIS browser"

•  Displaying in Drupal site as a themed block."

So what’s happening?

•  The Alfresco folder path is sent to the CMIS API to determine it’s objectID using ‘cmisapi_getObjectByPath’"

•  The preferences for the view are saved to the database including the theme information."

•  At runtime Drupal executes a query based on the objectID – it also joins the Alfresco cm:titled aspect which isn’t supported by default."

•  Drupal themes the block dependent on the users selection."

So what’s happening?

•  The Alfresco folder reference is saved in Drupal."•  ‘select d.cmis:name, t.cm:description, t.cm:title, d.cmis:lastModificationDate,

d.cmis:contentStreamMimeType, d.cmis:objectId, d.cmis:contentStreamLength from cmis:document as d join cm:titled as t on d.cmis:objectid = t.cmis:objectid where in_folder(d, '" . $uuid . "') ORDER BY d.cmis:name ASC’"

•  We can change the theme retrospectively and even change the folder that we point to."

•  Permissions are created to view and administer CMIS Views."

"

Future Plans

•  CMIS Sync, entities in Drupal 7."

•  CMIS Views, becomes a views plugin."

•  CMIS Search, offers federated search across the two

systems."

CMIS Views as views plugin

In Summary

•  CMIS offers a quick solution."

•  Best of both worlds application."

•  Get involved at addons.alfresco.com and drupal.org"

WCM Solutions with Drupal and Alfresco

Any questions?"