coreContentOnly - October, 2008

By adding IsXml=1 to the end of the HCSF URL

Friday, October 24, 2008 2:50:26 PM (Central Daylight Time, UTC-05:00)

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Wednesday, October 22, 2008

It's Always Been Done This Way by Jason Stortz

A group of scientists put five monkeys in a cage. In the center of the cage was a step ladder, and a banana was hung from the very top. The monkeys scurried up the ladder to retrieve the banana and then the scientists sprayed them with freezing cold water to prevent them from reaching it. Each time they tried to go up the ladder, they were again sprayed until none of the monkeys went up the ladder.

The scientists removed one monkey from the cage and replaced it with a new monkey. The new monkey saw the banana, saw the ladder and attempted to go up. The four original monkeys, afraid of being sprayed with water, assaulted the new guy to prevent him from going up the ladder. He had no idea why he was being attacked but he didn't go up the ladder again.

A second original monkey was removed from the cage and replaced with a new one. Same thing: the new monkey attempts to go up the ladder to retrieve the banana, and once again, this newest monkey is assaulted. Except this time, the first new monkey takes part in the beating of the newest monkey. He has no idea why he is participating in the beating, but nevertheless it happened to him.

This process of bringing in new monkeys continues until there are no original ones in the cage that were sprayed with cold water. But no monkey in this now completely new group dares go up the ladder out of fear of being assaulted, not sprayed with cold water. Again, it's always been done this way!

Thanks to my co-worker Mark for pointing out this story. I'm sure several of you already knew of its existence. I sure felt this applied to the business of content management and incorporating new systems in general for companies. Think about content server’s WebDAV capability. You install content server at company X. "Can we still look at it with folders?" they ask? Why? Because that’s how they do it today, that’s how they’ve always done it...

Wednesday, October 22, 2008 7:56:48 AM (Central Daylight Time, UTC-05:00)

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Monday, October 20, 2008

Site Studio Default Link Format Per Site by Jason Stortz

With the newer versions of Site Studio (10gR3, at least 10.1.3.3.3+) there is a handy way to set the default link format for your site. You can do this through the Site Studio Designer and the setting is persisted in your Project XML file in Content Server. This is pretty handy if you want to do things like using one manner of linking to data files for 90% of your content creation work.

Monday, October 20, 2008 11:01:36 AM (Central Daylight Time, UTC-05:00)

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Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Accessing HTTP Header Information With iDocScript by Jason Stortz

Sometimes when you are performing some web programming in iDocScript it is necessary to get at the HTTP Headers of the request. The headers are there, and they are available, but they may be named something different from what you are expecting. For example, "Accept-Language" will be available as "HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE".

When I make a normal request and I spy on the request using a tool like Fiddler the headers I am sending are listed out as:

Accept: */*
Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate
Accept-Language: en-us
UA-CPU: x86
User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0...
Connection: Keep-Alive
Host: localhost
Cookie: IntradocAuth=Internet; IdcLocale=English-US

Then, here are the request variables printed out by Content Server (matching from above are bolded):

HTTP_ACCEPT=*/*
HTTP_ACCEPT_ENCODING=gzip, deflate
HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE=en-us
HTTP_USER_AGENT=Mozilla/4.0...
HTTP_CONNECTION=Keep-Alive
HTTP_HOST=localhost
HTTP_COOKIE=IntradocAuth=Internet; IdcLocale=English-US
REQUEST_METHOD=GET
IdcAuthChallengeType=http
IsSocketConnection=1
SERVER_NAME=localhost
ThreadCount=1
SERVER_SOFTWARE=Microsoft-IIS/6.0
HTTP_CGIPATHROOT=/wcm/idcplg
RemoteClientHostAddress=127.0.0.1
ssoriginalurl=/web/index.htm
GATEWAY_INTERFACE=CGI/1.1
REMOTE_ADDR=x.x.x.x
SERVER_PROTOCOL=HTTP/1.1
IDC_REQUEST_AGENT=webserver
SERVER_PROTOCOL_TYPE=NONE
QUERY_STRING=IdcService=SS_GET_PAGE&siteId=web&siteRelativeUrl=%2Findex.htm&ssUrlType=2
REMOTE_HOST=x.x.x.x
REQUESTURI=/wcm/groups/system/documents/web_assets/wpl_www_jsp.jsp
RemoteClientPort=4444
SERVER_PORT=80
RemoteClientRemotePort=1231
CONTENT_LENGTH=0
IDC_REQUEST_CTIME=1224069779
PATH_TRANSLATED=c:\inetpub\wwwroot

So, to use these in iDocScript I can call them by the names from this last list, with something like <$HTTP_HOST$> or <$HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUGAE$>

Side Note, to get these variables printed out I put this code in my Site Studio page (JSP). This caused my binder to print out to my page so I could see all the information available to me.

<%=serverbean.evalIdcScp("trace(\"#all\", \"MyTest\")")%><%=serverbean.evalIdcScp("trace(\"#all\", \"MyTest\")")%>
<%=serverbean.evalIdcScp("MyTest")%>
<%=serverbean.evalIdcScp("MyTest")%>
And finally, if you are passing in custom headers you are in for a treat because then you may need a component to serialize your custom header.

Wednesday, October 15, 2008 7:03:15 AM (Central Daylight Time, UTC-05:00)

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Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Silverlight 2.0 Released by Jason Stortz

Like them or hate them, Microsoft continues to be busy. Personally, I like the Silverlight platform and I think almost all forms of competition is good. I think Silverlight, while different, is good for the Flash/Air/Fireworks platforms. If nobody is chasing you, you don't try as hard.

So anyway, Microsoft has released the production, final version of Silverlight 2.0!

http://silverlight.net/

Tuesday, October 14, 2008 9:01:38 PM (Central Daylight Time, UTC-05:00)

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Monday, October 13, 2008

SSEphoxImageSetting - A Content Server Configuration for Ephox by Jason Stortz

When oracle released the 10.1.3.3.3+ site studio product they delivered a new contributor application along with new data file formats. Inside these data files the structure has changed from previous versions. Here’s an example of the new format:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?> 
<wcm:root xmlns:wcm="http://www.stellent.com/wcm-data/ns/8.0.0" version="8.0.0.0">
    <wcm:element name="HeaderImage"><img border="0" alt="Wide Image" src="[!--$ssWeblayoutUrl('groups/public/documents/web_assets/wideimage.gif')--]" /></wcm:element> 
</wcm:root>

As you can see a near full path is embedded in the xml file. In this case if I were to change the security group of this image from public to secure the page using this data file would render with a missing image. The same is also true of the doc type and/or account. What can we do about this?

The documentation mentions that the function ssWeblayoutUrl() is able to work with the dDocName: This script extension is used to determine the full web address of a file from either the path or dDocName. This is most typically used for paths to images in data files.

Great. It turns out that through the use of a configuration variable added to config.cfg or through the admin server under general configuration week in control what gets embedded in data files. Note: this is available in build 251 or higher.

SSWeblayoutUrlUsesDocNames=true

On a related note, check out another blog post starring ssWeblayoutUrl over at Web Monkey Magic.

http://webmonkeymagic.blogspot.com/2008/09/surprise-ssweblayouturl.html

Monday, October 13, 2008 8:49:23 PM (Central Daylight Time, UTC-05:00)

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Tuesday, October 07, 2008

Keep Latest N Revisions by Jason Stortz

There are often a wide variety of reasons why someone may want to keep only the latest n revisions of content in their content server. These reasons range all over from keeping disk usage in check to a form of security/retention management. Whatever your reason the process is pretty straight forward. I am going to show you how to setup archiver to take out all but the latest X revisions. In a later post we can talk about various ways to enact that archive on a scheduled basis.

So, simply put, the secret to this is the Revision Rank (dRevRank) field. A lot of times in the past I've tried looking at dRevLabel, dID, dDocID, but nope, the special field you want is Revision Rank. Use the following steps to set up your archive:

Log onto your content server as a user with administration rights
Under "Administration" select "Admin Applets" and then fire up the Archiver applet
From the "Edit" menu select "Add"
Give your archive some kind of meaningful name
Provide a description, perhaps include something about the expected lifetime of this archive?
Click "OK"
Select the new archive in the archive list and then click on the "Export Data" tab
From the Export Query section select "Edit"
Set the following field defintions
1. field to "Revision Rank"
2. Set the Operator to "Is Greater Than"
3. Set the value to "4"
Click "Add", add and then "OK"
Under "Actions" click on "Export"

Great, now lets discuss some of these points. The Revision Rank field is zero based (meaning it starts at zero) and that zero represents the most recent revision of the content in question. The second most recent revision is denoted by a dRevRank of 1, etc. For example, if you wanted to delete everything but the 5 latest revisions you should set dRevRank to 4. If you wanted to only keep the most recent revsion set dRevRank to 0.

Upon selecting "Export" you will be prompted deleting the revisions from content server during the export process. If you place a check mark in the check box the content will be REMOVED from content server. The content will continue to exist in the archive you just exported as long as you don't crack that open and delete it in there as well.

Tuesday, October 07, 2008 7:51:24 PM (Central Daylight Time, UTC-05:00)

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