FlexSpaces, CMIS Spaces, and Portlets updates

 FlexSpaces 04 05 2011

FlexSpaces (Flex+AIR, Flex+Browser, portlets) RIA clients for Alfresco ECM

In March, FlexSpaces (Google Code, Alfresco Forge) was finally ported from Flex 3 to Flex 4. A first pass of moving from halo controls to spark controls was made, and it has a new look with the spark theme. In April the “04 05 2011” version of FlexSpaces added the optional capability to use Alfresco Share form xml configurations to configure view/edit mode Flex forms in a new tabbed properties dialog, thus supporting custom types, aspects, etc. See the readme-form-config.txt in the distributions for how to enable and use this configuration capability.  This version also changed to have the advanced search and properties dialogs resizable using skins from flexdevtips.    

In May, the portlets to run FlexSpaces in portals were updated. To keep them from getting outdated as quickly, they are now wrappers that reference a separate install of the “in-browser” non AIR version of FlexSpaces (that can be updated separately). The older FlexSpaces Liferay portlet supported Liferay 5.x, the new one supports Liferay 6.x.  This is available in the Liferay community plugins catalog. The FlexSpaces portlet and gadget for the GateIn portal were both updated. The FlexSpaces portlet for the original JBoss portal was also updated.

CMIS Spaces (Flex+AIR, Flex+Browser, portlet) RIA clients for content servers supporting the CMIS standard (Alfresco, IBM, EMC, Nuxeo, Microsoft SharePoint, Adobe Day CRX, etc.)

In April, CMIS Spaces, based on FlexSpaces, was ported from Flex 3 to Flex 4. CMIS Spaces has both atompub rest binding support (default, with more features hooked up in the UI) and web services SOAP binding support (optional, with only navigation and search features can be used through the UI, although the full featured data access backend code is present). Note that the ActionScript code for all the CMIS SOAP binding APIs was re-generated with FlashBuilder 4 / Flex 4.1 SDK / fiber (and this improved things to not have repeated code for types across the multiple CMIS SOAP web services).

In May, a Liferay 6.x wrapper portlet for using CMIS Spaces in a Liferay portal was introduced. This portlet references a separate install of the “in-browser” version of CMIS Spaces. Having these two parts allows CMIS Spaces, like Flex Spaces, to be updated separately and avoids the portlet getting out of date. The CMIS Spaces portlet is also in the Liferay catalog.

JBoss Portal Portlet for FlexSpaces/Alfresco

 FlexSpaces JBoss Portal portlet

In addition to a Liferay portlet, I recently added a JBoss Portal portlet for FlexSpaces (Alfresco Forge, Google Code).  See previous post about the Liferay portlet since some of the same things apply (setting up two app servers, pointers to SSO info, etc.).

How to setup:
1. Install Alfresco community or enterprise (I used Alfresco 3.2 community bundled with Tomcat)
2. Start alfresco user admin pw admin, install flexspaces 0.91+ webscripts, see readmeWebScripts.txt
3. shutdown Alfresco
4. Install a JBoss Portal community or enterprise (I used 2.7.2 community bundled with a 4.2.3 JBoss app server)
5. Change port 8080 to 9080 and port 8009 to 9009 in jboss-portal-2.7.2/server/default/deploy/jboss-web.deployer/server.xml
to not conflict with ports in alfresco running in a separate app server
6. Copy flexspaces-jboss-portlet.war to jboss-portal-2.7.2/server/default/deploy/
7. start jboss portal with jboss-portal-2.7.2\bin\run.bat
8. run http://localhost:9080/portal and log in with admin/admin (so portlet edit UI will be enabled)
9. startup alfresco
10. in jboss portal switch to FlexSpaces tab, click on “Edit” on the flexspaces portlet and setup alfresco url  if needed and other options and click update.
11. log into FlexSpaces portlet (admin/admin or other user/pw)

JBoss+eXo GateIn Portal (See GateIn website)
I tried the FlexSpaces JBoss portlet with the beta1 of GateIn and it didn’t work. I am looking into creating a FlexSpaces portlet and a gadget for this new portal)

Steve