CMS Blog

Lscs debug panel

Sun, 24 Jul 2011 15:44:42 +0200

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.

Devnet: Unable to connect to db

Mon, 20 Jun 2011 12:25:58 +0200

Devnet was showing this error all through the weekend (which in a european timezone includes the monday morning!). Would somebody at Interwoven be aware of this?

Globalized Content Manager

Sun, 05 Jun 2011 21:37:26 +0200

New in Teamsite 7.2 is the "Globalized Content Manager" which is a marketing name for the long waiting support for localisations and translations. From the 7.2 manual:

"With TeamSite's Globalized Content Management (GCM) solution, site authors, owners, and editors can quickly and easily launch a Web site into different markets on an international basis and then maintain the family of localized sites. Using ContentCenter Professional, an author can initiate the localization process for a Web site and then monitor the progress of that localization effort."

The idea behind the tool is that every file (.page, dcr, site(-map), ...) has a master 'copy' and 0 or more localised 'copies'. Teamsite manages the relation between them and can thus 'manage' the translation (e.g. take action when a master-copy is updated so that the change is propagated to the localised copies). The localised version are stored with the locale in the name or directory path.

Each localised site has it own site-map and every localised page must be created and updated by the content editor. This is a crucial remark. The localised version of the page is NOT generated at request time but MUST be created beforehand. There is not fallback to default language mechnism. I am not sure which mechanism I like best.

See chapter 14 of the "ContentCenter Professional User Guide Version 7.2" for more detail.

Typo 4.5 does NOT support php's Safe_mode

Fri, 27 May 2011 21:28:42 +0200

Even though the release notes for Typo3 4.5 say otherwise this version is NOT compatible with php safe mode enabled.

So don't let them fool you!

Teamsite dependency manager

Mon, 28 Mar 2011 21:53:55 +0200

Teamsite 7.2 comes with 2 new features: a Dependency Manager and a Globalized Content Manager. I will discuss the Globalized Content Manager later. Today I will focus on the Dependency Manager.

The Dependency Manager full fills a long running wish: how to manage relations (or links) between files in Teamsite, like a dcr that refers to an image. The dependency manager keeps track of these links, by storing them in an internal database. The information in this database is then used:

to show all related files of a file
to show a warning when the user tries to delete a file that is used by another file
to add all related files (images, pages, etc) to the SitePublisher workflow if you submit a file

The dependency manager finds these links by simply storing all references in any dcr- or .page-file:

any browse field (browse, image, file, page, etc)
an image-element ({img src="image.gif"/}) in a dcr textarea field (but not flash/css/js files!).

This storage is trigerred by the save action of a dcr. No need to take extra action for this.

Teamsite users can then view the related files via the gui:

There is also a few new methods in the CsSdk api available like CsFile.getParentAssociations() which allows you to query the related files of a file. Automonomy has not notehred to create a CLT for this so if you use perl you are on your own.

So nothing to complain about. Well, yes. The warning message that appears if you try to delete a referenced file is really not that clear. Compare:

Deleting image.JPG will remove it from TeamSite.

The items that use this file may need to be manually updated to replace or remove references to this file.

vs.

Deleting image.gif will remove it from TeamSite.

No highlighting, no colors, no red-lights. Next version maybe. And please include some proper documentation on this tool at the same go!