Lscs comes with a debug panel (actually a REST API) that can be very useful if you need to debug your livesite lscs-queries. The manual is very brief on this section so here some usefull urls and remarks.

http: //server:port/lscs/admin/debugpanel/ [default port is 1876, I believe]

This is the most usefull url which gives you access to lscs-status, -diagnostics, -projectsnames and document query.

With the 'document query' you can query lscs for all metadata stored for a document. F.i. if you enter in field 'q' under 'Metadata Search' a query like 'TeamSite/Templating/DCR/Type:category/type' you will see a list of of dcr's of the dct 'category/type' within the project. Enter '*' in field 'q' and *all* documents will be returned. If you leave the project field empty it will use the first project name a listed under 'List project names'.

http: //server:port/lscs/v1/metadata-info

This returns a list of all known metadata fields with lscs.

http: //server:port/lscs/v1/document/path/sites/mysite/default.site?project=myproject

This returns the document (e.g. file contents, NOT the metadata) from the path (in the workarea) sites/mysite/default.site from myproject. Again you can leave the project out to query the default project.

Now, with this info read the manual again for further details.

 

Livesite has silently introduced a new feature that could be very helpfull: custom page tokens. Documentation for it is non-existing (and this seems to be a trend at Autonomy. In the Interwoven area documentation was never its strongest point but since Autonomy has taken over the situation has gone worse.)

Page tokens are a well known and documented feature of Livesite. They are used to insert text into the resulting HTML, like livesite-links (URL_PREFIX) or xpath-values (MODEL). This feature is now extended so that you can write your own custom page tokens. Here is how to:

First, add a section like to to TeamSite\local\config\lib\content_center\livesite_customer_src\etc\conf\livesite_customer\resources\customer-resource-config.xml::

        <entry key="SAMPLE_TOKEN">

          <value>com.interwoven.livesite.external.runtime.example.PageTokenVariableSample</value>

        </entry>

in which the key is the name of the token (without the $-prefix!) and the value is your (custom) class that implements the token.

Second, create the class:

public class PageTokenVariableSample extends PageTokenVariable

{

  /**

   * {@inheritDoc}

   */

  public void init(BaseRequestContext context)

  {

    super.init(context);

    

    // Do additional initialization here or remove this method if there if none

  }



  /**

   * {@inheritDoc}

   */

  public void preRender(BaseRequestContext context)

  {

    super.preRender(context);

   

    // Do additional pre-rendering here or remove this method if there if none

  }



  /**

   * {@inheritDoc}

   */



  public void render(PrintWriter writer, BaseRequestContext context) throws Exception

  {

    // Do some work here

    writer.print("$"+mTokenName+" has been replaced with this text");

  }

}

Note that the result of the init-method is cached by livesite. Any parameters can be found in the inherited String 'mParameter'.

Run build.bat and you are ready to go.

LiveSite and Sitepublisher 3.1 have 2 interesting features that greatly enhance the powers of it. Let's have a close look at these.

Custom Page Types

First feature to mention is the 'Custom Page Types' (dubbed 'Doctype Support' in the manual, such a stupid name because it clashes with the well-known html-doctype. Using this mechanism one can define a xsl-stylesheet to use for the master page-html. This is important because I believe that the html that the default page-xsl produces is not very good. It is not accessible, not standard-compliant, fuzzy code is inserted and it uses a css-stylesheet which I don't like. In fact, I think code like this should always be custom-created.

Adding your own custom page type is very easy. Add something like below to livesite_customer_src/etc/conf/livesite_customer/pagetype-config.xml and rebuild the livesite-toolkit:

 

  <page-types> 

    <page-type id="yourid" default="false"> 

      <name>Any name</name> 

      <output> 

        <doctype/> 

        <method>html</method> 

        <content-type>text/html</content-type> 

        <omit-xml-declaration>true</omit-xml-declaration> 

      </output> 

      <allowed-layouts> 

        <layout refid="yourlayout"/> 

      </allowed-layouts> 

    </page-type> 

  </page-types> 

  <layouts> 

   <layout id="yourlayout"> 

      <name>Your Layout</name> 

      <stylesheet>nl/contentdokter/xsl/runtime/yourstyle.xsl</stylesheet> 

      <class>com.interwoven.livesite.layout.impl.DivLayout</class> 

    </layout> 

  </layouts> 

Now all you need to do is create your own xsl-stylesheet (under livesite_customer_src/etc/classes/nl/contentdokter/xsl/runtime/yourstyle.xsl). Two short tips on this:

1. use one of the xsl-files under httpdwebappscontent_centerWEB-INFclassescominterwovenxslruntime as a reference example

2. if your want to know how the source xml looks use this xsl-template:

        <xsl:template match="/"> 

                <xsl:copy-of select="."/> 

        </xsl:template> 

Note that you could even, if you really have the courage, to write your own Layout-class in java. That is, however, not easy and I don't really see a good use for it.

Custom Fixed Layouts

The second feature to mention is the 'Custom Fixed Layouts'. Using this, you stop using the original free-flow layout of SitePublisher and instead divide your page into fixed areas in which your end-users can drop the components. A crucial feature, really, because I don't think I will ever meet a content-editor that can be bothered with placing a component on a pixel-exact detail. Too time-consuming and error-prone.

If you want to try it out yourself, follow the chapter on this in the manual but, important, the given example has 1 or 2 annoying errors that will break it!

A perfect world

Now, in a perfect world one would be able to combine these two features:

1. create a fixed layout matching your sites styleguide

2. create a custom page-stylesheet with clean html and all custom css/js included

Well, that will work but it won't! So yes, you can overwrite the default 'fixed-layout' with your own, and thus define which page-xsl to use. But you can NOT create a second (or third) layout-entry in pagetype-config for a fixed layout.

Thus is due to the fact that the (internal) java-code does a string-match in the layout-id for 'fixed-layout'. It would have been so much better would they have added a boolean attribute to the layout-element like 'is-fixed-layout'. But they haven't.

Typical. :-(