OpenCms 7 development : extending and customizing OpenCms through its Java API

**In Detail OpenCms is a professional-level open-source Website Content Management System, based on Java and XML. Many companies or organizations have requirements that go beyond what is available in the standard OpenCms application. Thankfully, OpenCms can be used by Java developers to create sophisticated add-ons and customizations that extend the power of OpenCms in virtually unlimited directions. Targeting version 7 of OpenCms, this book is for Java developers interested in extending and further customizing OpenCms through its Java API. Starting by showing how to set up a development environment for OpenCms work, the book moves you through various tasks of increasing complexity. Some of the common tasks covered are building OpenCms, XML asset type development, templating, module development, user and role setup, and search integration. In addition to these common tasks some more advanced topics are covered such as self-registering users, RSS support, developing custom widgets and extending the administrative interface. All the topics include examples and are presented while building a sample blog site. The skills you develop will make you an OpenCms developer to be reckoned with! **What you will learn from this book? * An overview of the OpenCms development architecture * Developing in the OpenCms environment * Working with the templating system * Using the template API * Extending and using OpenCms beans in template code * Using the JSTL tag library * Template caching * Understanding resource collectors * Understanding and creating OpenCms modules * Creating structured content types * Rules for creating OpenCms schema files * Registering content types with OpenCms * User Interface Widgets and their options * Nesting content types * Using Validating XML editors to edit configuration files * Using Eclipse and WebDAV for module development * Configuring OpenCms Search * Looking at search indexes * Supporting searching in templates * Understanding OpenCms security * Adding user registration and web user logins * Programmatic publishing of content * Providing site customization features * Designing and creating Custom OpenCms widgets * Using OpenCms message strings for localization * Adding RSS support to OpenCms * Adding OpenCms Administration Points * Using OpenCms List and Dialog classes * Programmatically using OpenCms widgets **Approach This book is a clear, practical tutorial to OpenCms development. It will take you through the development of an example site, illustrating the key concepts of OpenCms development with examples at every stage. **Who this book is written for? The book is for Java developers with a basic knowledge of the operations of OpenCms. No previous experience of developing OpenCms is expected.******** OpenCms 7 Development 1 Table of Contents 8 Preface 12 Chapter 1: Overview 18 The Site Design 19 Required Developer Skills 23 Basic Site Development 23 Sites Requiring Custom Content Types 24 Sites Requiring Custom Features 25 Bespoke Site Development 25 OpenCms Application Overview 25 The OpenCms Directory Structure 26 The Real File System Layout 26 The Virtual File System Layout 29 OpenCms Architecture 30 Extensibility through Modules 31 The OpenCms Web Request Process 31 OpenCms Web Application Packaging 32 Building a Complete Site with OpenCms 32 Summary 33 Chapter 2: Developing in OpenCms 34 Developing Basic Site Content 34 Setting Up an Environment for Creating JSP Code 35 Editing Files Using File Synchronization 37 Using WebDAV for Editing 39 Debugging JSP Code in OpenCms 41 Setting Up an Eclipse Environment to Build OpenCms 44 Tools Needed to Build OpenCms in Eclipse 44 Step 1: Checkout the Project Source from CVS 45 Step 2: Setting the Classpath for Compilation 51 Step 3: Using Ant to Build a Distribution Package 52 Building OpenCms outside of Eclipse Using Ant 55 Debugging OpenCms in Eclipse 56 Setting Up an Eclipse Environment without Building OpenCms 57 Summary 58 Chapter 3: Our First Module 60 Understanding OpenCms Modules 61 Common Module Types 61 Module Events 62 Exporting and Importing Modules 62 Creating a Module 63 Creating a BlogEntry Content Type 66 Registering the Content Type 70 Additional Schema Features 77 Field Mappings 77 Field Validations 78 Default Field Values 78 Localization 79 Content Relationships 79 Content Previewing 80 Creating Content Using a Model 81 User Interface Widgets 81 Nested Content Definitions 91 Editing Configuration Files with Validating Editors 95 Organizing the Content 98 Summary 98 Chapter 4: Developing Templates 100 Review of the Page Layout 100 Templates in OpenCms 105 Creating the Templates 105 The Homepage Template 106 The Blog Content Loop 108 The Sidebar and Footer 110 Common Code Elements 111 Header Code 112 Search Form 113 Advertisements 113 Blog Archives 114 RSS Client and RSS Feeds 116 Footer Section 117 The Supporting Java Bean Class 117 The Blog Template 123 The Content and Template Loading Process 124 Expressions in JSP Templates 126 Using the Tag Library from JSP 126 Combining Expressions with JSTL 127 Accelerating Template Development Using WebDAV 128 Install the Eclipse WebDAV Plug-in 129 Create a Site Within Eclipse for the Server 131 Import Content into the Project 133 Summary 135 Chapter 5: Adding Site Search 136 A Quick Overview of Lucene 136 Search Indexes 136 Search Queries 138 Configuring OpenCms Search 138 Field Configurations 139 Creating a Field Configuration 141 Creating an Index Source 144 Additional Search Settings 147 Introducing Luke – a Visual Index Tool 148 Writing the Search Code 151 A Simple Search Example 151 Subclassing the CmsSearch Bean 154 The Search.jsp Template 156 Summary 162 Chapter 6: Adding User Registration and Comment Support 164 Understanding OpenCms Security 164 User, Groups, Roles, and Permissions 165 Organizational Units 168 Setting up Security for Our Site 169 Organization Unit and Group Setup 170 Adding the Users 174 Resource Permissions 177 User Login and Registration Code 180 Adding Comment Support 189 Adding the Comments to the XML Content 192 Publishing the Comments 194 Summary 195 Chapter 7: Providing Site Customization Features 196 What is RSS? 196 Creating the Module 197 The RSS Client Code 198 Displaying the RSS Feed in the Template 200 Adding User Preferences to Accounts 201 Updating the Java Code 202 Updating the JSP Templates 204 Hooking up the Account Management Page 207 Summary 209 Chapter 8: Extending OpenCms: Developing a Custom Widget 210 Designing a Custom Widget 210 Designing the Widget 212 The Widget Code 213 Custom Source Interface and Implementations 218 Using OpenCms Message Strings for Localization 223 Registering the Widget with OpenCms 224 Summary 225 Chapter 9: Extending OpenCms: Adding RSS Feed Support 226 RSS Feed Design 226 The RSS Feed Content Type 229 Creating a Supporting Widget 234 The RSS Feed Template and Java Classes 237 Content Wrapper Java Classes 242 Wrapping It Up 247 Summary 249 Chapter 10: Extending OpenCms: Adding an Administration Point 250 Administrative Points 250 The Administration View 254 Hooking the Administration Point Up to the Module 256 The RSS Administration Module 257 Leveraging the OpenCms Dialog Classes 261 The Feed Manager Class 270 The New Channel Action 276 Summary 281 Index 282 www.it-ebooks.info IT eBooks

In Detail

This unique book gives you more than just a guide to the  Moodle software; it uses Moodle as a route to better teaching, more motivated students, and more successful courses. Moodle is the leading Open Source learning management system. Using Moodle, teachers can easily construct richly textured web based courses.  A course can consist of a number of lessons, with each lesson including reading materials; activities such as quizzes, tests, surveys, and projects; and social elements that encourage interaction and group work between students.Moodle E-Learning Course Development shows you how to use Moodle as a tool to enhance your teaching. It will help you analyse your students' requirements, and come to an understanding of what Moodle can do for them. After that you'll see how to use every feature of Moodle to meet your course goals.

The social constructionist learning philosophy is at the heart of Moodle: we all "construct" knowledge through interation with one another and with learning materials in a social way. Moodle E-Learning Course Develelopment will show you how to add static learning material, interactive activities, and social features to your courses so that students reach their learning potential. Whether you want to support traditional class teaching or lecturing, or provide complete online and distance learning courses, this book will prove a powerful resource throughout your use of Moodle.

A complete guide to successful learning using Moodle, focused on course development and delivery and using the best educational practices. Moodle is relatively easy to install and use, but the real challenge is to develop a learning process that leverages its power and maps effectively onto the content established learning situation. This book guides you through meeting that challenge.

Approach

William Rice is an experienced trainer and expert on learning and teaching practices. This experience and expertise forms the foundation of his approach: What do we want to teach? How would this best translate into a course? How best can Moodle support these course objectives?

Of course, the book contains everything you'd expect from an introduction to Moodle: clear step-by-step instructions, plenty of screenshots, explanations and guides through the many features and options that you have to choose from. Throughout the book, William develops an example course. He uses this example to explore the sort of decisions, design considerations, and thought that goes into developing a successful course.

Who this book is for

This book is for anyone who wants to get the best from Moodle. Beginners will get a thorough guide to how the software works, with great ideas for getting off to a good start with their first course. More experienced Moodlers will find powerful insights into developing more successful and educational courses.

In Detail This unique book gives you more than just a guide to the Moodle software; it uses Moodle as a route to better teaching, more motivated students, and more successful courses. Moodle is the leading Open Source learning management system. Using Moodle, teachers can easily construct richly textured web based courses. A course can consist of a number of lessons, with each lesson including reading materials; activities such as quizzes, tests, surveys, and projects; and social elements that encourage interaction and group work between students.Moodle E-Learning Course Development shows you how to use Moodle as a tool to enhance your teaching. It will help you analyse your students'requirements, and come to an understanding of what Moodle can do for them. After that you'll see how to use every feature of Moodle to meet your course goals. The social constructionist learning philosophy is at the heart of Moodle: we all'construct'knowledge through interation with one another and with learning materials in a social way. Moodle E-Learning Course Develelopment will show you how to add static learning material, interactive activities, and social features to your courses so that students reach their learning potential. Whether you want to support traditional class teaching or lecturing, or provide complete online and distance learning courses, this book will prove a powerful resource throughout your use of Moodle. A complete guide to successful learning using Moodle, focused on course development and delivery and using the best educational practices. Moodle is relatively easy to install and use, but the real challenge is to develop a learning process that leverages its power and maps effectively onto the content established learning situation. This book guides you through meeting that challenge. Approach William Rice is an experienced trainer and expert on learning and teaching practices. This experience and expertise forms the foundation of his approach: What do we want to teach? How would this best translate into a course? How best can Moodle support these course objectives? Of course, the book contains everything you'd expect from an introduction to Moodle: clear step-by-step instructions, plenty of screenshots, explanations and guides through the many features and options that you have to choose from. Throughout the book, William develops an example course. He uses this example to explore the sort of decisions, design considerations, and thought that goes into developing a successful course. Who this book is for This book is for anyone who wants to get the best from Moodle. Beginners will get a thorough guide to how the software works, with great ideas for getting off to a good start with their first course. More experienced Moodlers will find powerful insights into developing more successful and educational courses.

In Detail

Drupal is a hugely popular and widely celebrated open-source Content Management System that is day-by-day becoming the first choice of people for building blogs and other websites. Sir Tim Berners-Lee (the father of the Internet), Hillary Clinton, and many others utilize Drupal to fulfil their online requirements.

Drupal is an elegantly designed, well-supported and flexible platform that anyone can use in order to create their own website. With such a powerful tool at your fingertips there is no longer any need to pay professionals to design a site when you can do the same job yourself absolutely free. All it takes is a bit of practice!

This book meets the booming demand for well presented, clear, concise, and above all practical information on how to move from knowing you want a website all the way through to designing and building it like a pro, and finally successfully managing and maintaining it.

Experienced technical author David Mercer expertly guides the reader through all the stages of building a professional website in a plain, articulate manner. Aimed in particular at beginners to Drupal, this book will allow readers to advance rapidly up the learning curve to the point where they can tackle any problem with confidence.

This book updates the bestselling Drupal: Creating Blogs, Forums, Portals, and Community Websites released for Drupal 4.7. David Mercer revisits the hugely popular Drupal CMS and expands, concentrates, and upgrades the original book to bring it line with the vastly improved latest version, Drupal 6.

Approach

Written in the same style as the original Drupal title, this book is a pragmatic look at the steps necessary to get a website up and running. Drawing on years of writing experience, David Mercer utilizes a friendly, engaging style that is both clear and concise, perfect for the Drupal newbie.

Who this book is for

This book is for people with little or no experience in website design, people who are not familiar with PHP, MySQL or HTML, and above all people with little to no experience in using Drupal. Even intermediate Drupal users will find this book of interest although it is specifically aimed at pushing beginners up the learning curve.

In Detail

OpenCms is a professional-level open-source Website Content Management System, based on Java and XML. Many companies or organizations have requirements that go beyond what is available in the standard OpenCms application. Thankfully, OpenCms can be used by Java developers to create sophisticated add-ons and customizations that extend the power of OpenCms in virtually unlimited directions.

Targeting version 7 of OpenCms, this book is for Java developers interested in extending and further customizing OpenCms through its Java API.

Starting by showing how to set up a development environment for OpenCms work, the book moves you through various tasks of increasing complexity. Some of the common tasks covered are building OpenCms, XML asset type development, templating, module development, user and role setup, and search integration. In addition to these common tasks some more advanced topics are covered such as self-registering users, RSS support, developing custom widgets and extending the administrative interface. All the topics include examples and are presented while building a sample blog site.

The skills you develop will make you an OpenCms developer to be reckoned with!

Targeting version 7 of OpenCms, this book is for Java developers interested in extending and further customizing OpenCms through its Java API.

Approach

This book is a clear, practical tutorial to OpenCms development. It will take you through the development of an example site, illustrating the key concepts of OpenCms development with examples at every stage.

Who this book is for

The book is for Java developers with a basic knowledge of the operations of OpenCms. No previous experience of developing OpenCms is expected.

In Detail OpenCms is a professional-level open-source Website Content Management System, based on Java and XML. Many companies or organizations have requirements that go beyond what is available in the standard OpenCms application. Thankfully, OpenCms can be used by Java developers to create sophisticated add-ons and customizations that extend the power of OpenCms in virtually unlimited directions. Targeting version 7 of OpenCms, this book is for Java developers interested in extending and further customizing OpenCms through its Java API. Starting by showing how to set up a development environment for OpenCms work, the book moves you through various tasks of increasing complexity. Some of the common tasks covered are building OpenCms, XML asset type development, templating, module development, user and role setup, and search integration. In addition to these common tasks some more advanced topics are covered such as self-registering users, RSS support, developing custom widgets and extending the administrative interface. All the topics include examples and are presented while building a sample blog site. The skills you develop will make you an OpenCms developer to be reckoned with! Targeting version 7 of OpenCms, this book is for Java developers interested in extending and further customizing OpenCms through its Java API. Approach This book is a clear, practical tutorial to OpenCms development. It will take you through the development of an example site, illustrating the key concepts of OpenCms development with examples at every stage. Who this book is for The book is for Java developers with a basic knowledge of the operations of OpenCms. No previous experience of developing OpenCms is expected. Annotation This book updates the bestselling Drupal: Creating Blogs, Forums, Portals, and Community Websites for Drupal 6, the latest, much improved version of this popular open-source Content Management System. Targeting readers with little experience in website design, unfamiliar with PHP, MySQL or HTML, and with little to no experience of Drupal, it looks pragmatically at the steps needed from knowing you want a website right through to designing and building it like a pro, and then successfully managing and maintaining it. Experienced author David Mercer uses a friendly, engaging style that is clear and concise, allowing readers to advance rapidly until they can tackle any problem with confidence. Drupal is an elegantly designed, well-supported and flexible open-source CMS platform that empowers anyone to create a website or blog and is rapidly becoming first choice of people in the know. With this powerful tool you need not pay professionals to design a site; you can do the job yourself