Background: We're creating an offer for an Xamarin app for a customer, which is using AEM to manage a lot of content. We are not experienced with AEM, therefore I have the task to find the possibilities regarding a Web connection and how deep into AEM we need to interfere, to get the desired data.
Usually, I would never ask such a general question here, but after some hours of research, I didn't find any hint regarding a public API:
I've started a chat with an Adobe employee, but he told me, that he
can't help me regarding technical questions
I've analyzed the AEM architcture, finding Sling being a Web API
(https://helpx.adobe.com/experience-manager/using/querying-experience-manager-sling.html), but it also just Java
I've also found AEM Assets (https://helpx.adobe.com/experience-manager/6-4/assets/user-guide.html),but analyzing it, it seems like this is more like a Web App on top of AEM
I've also found Web APIs in AEM Screens,
https://helpx.adobe.com/experience-manager/6-3/sites/developing/using/developing-screens-rest-api.html, but the architecture here seems also very tightly coupled between the UI and the Web APIs
So, my question: Is there just no Web API at all? Or is one of the subproducts of AEM the endpoint, we could use to get data?
Based on the fact that you mentioned Xamarin I guess you are supposed to work on a mobile app.
You basically have four options, if you want to build that using AEM:
Use the Single Page Application (SPA) capabilities of AEM (requires AEM 6.4):
Use the (legacy) PhoneGap capabilities of AEM.
Use the out-of-the-box Sling APIs to expose the data you need and use them in your Xamarin app.
Write a custom (web service) API and use that in your Xamarin app.
I would strongly suggest to have a look at the SPA support or PhoneGap capabilities if you are not running AEM 6.4.
Working with the Sling API or building your own API is not the best option if you are new to AEM. There are so many pitfalls that will cause you a lot of headaches and you run the risk of creating an unmaintainable mess of an AEM project.
Related
I have several services, each one exposed through REST API with ASP.NET Core Web API. I use Swashbuckle for ASP.NET Core tooling in order to automatically generate from my controllers and DTOs all the necessary documentation and visualize it in SwaggerUI. I found this tooling really great, with little annotations on my models and my controllers already provides many features out of the box, such as a UI client to try out the REST API endpoints.
But with this solution each service has its own dedicated SwaggerUI instance and therefore UI.
I would like to offer to my customers a wiki-like documentation with a navigation menu, where, for instance, they can browse sections regarding all the endpoints exposed by my services and have on each page the same features offered by SwaggerUI.
It can be achieved by creating my own web application but I was wondering whether an out of the box solution or some tool that might ease such integration already exists.
I tried Slate but I felt like I had to re-invent the wheel in order to automate at least the creation of the basic API documentation, namely controller definition, response definition and descriptions. Does anyone have any suggestion?
I faced this very issue recently working in a microservices architecture, you're absolutely right. There is not need to reinvent the wheel.
I really can't recommend redoc by Redocly enough in this case.
Have a look at the multiple-apis example.
I'm new to building APIs, I made the first one using an MVC framework: codeigniter, with chris kacerguis rest implementation.
I'm not really sure this was the best think to do because I believe maybe the framework is not that "slim" or light just to API's purposes.
I plan to do a mobile App, an admin and a website so the three can consume the Api's services.
Is it a bad idea to have the API, the website and the admin on the same project? which are the pros and cons? or the best architectural approach?
Otherwise I will have: One Codeigniter project for the API and Another Codeigniter project for website and admin
thanks
You can create folders in "controllers" folder to organize your project and use the same project/env configuration :
controllers/Home.php
controllers/api/MyApi.php
controllers/admin/Admin.php
Edit : You will share models and libraries too.
In my project I realized 2 types of controller - REST and API. Admin js gui work with REST, other world work with API. You can do it simply with silex framework, a little brother of symfony.
The purpose of building a REST API so that you only have to build one project for your business model. This allows you to construct any number of applications on any platform, only requiring you to consume the API in different ways. This essentially separates/decouples the user interface from the business logic, and vice versa.
You should create separate projects for the REST API and each UI project should also be separated projects. This allows you to change the underlying code, language and platform in any one of the projects without breaking any of the other projects as long as the API signatures remain the same.
For example, you could have a live version of your website built using Codeignitor while developing another septate project using AngularJS. When your AngularJS project is complete you would simply swap out the project on your server (or create an entirely new website or server) still allowing you to use the other if required. Additionally, you may decide that you would like to move the API onto a different platform, language or database, develope it and swap the implementation when finished causing no changes to any of your UI projects assuming you have not changed the API signatures.
I was surfing the Internet where I found an article saying that Alfresco is a Content Management Framework as well as App Development Framework. While I understood it as Content Management Framework, I am not able to know about it as an App Development Framework.I tried researching over it, but could not find anything viable.
I want to know that how Alfresco can be used as an App Development Framework ?
Hi Alfresco has an application development framework, more info here:
Guides: https://community.alfresco.com/community/application-development-framework/pages/get-started
Angular 2 components repository: https://github.com/Alfresco/alfresco-ng2-components
Alfresco App Yeoman generator: https://github.com/Alfresco/generator-ng2-alfresco-app
JavaScript API repository: https://github.com/Alfresco/alfresco-js-api
Some videos:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-OFI3izSDdk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjOgVbINAyU
In case you want a live support you can use the Gitter channel: https://gitter.im/Alfresco/alfresco-ng2-components
Well, if for App is meant mobile application, Alfresco has a Mobile SDK available for both iOS and Android which can help you create your own application to work against the Alfresco Platform.
Moreover there is another framework called Aikau which has one main goal
The main purpose of Aikau is to provide a library of widgets that can be easily assembled into a web application for accessing an Alfresco repository. The aim is not to replace Share but it was necessary to migrate away from its original implementation, which was based around the Surf paradigms of pages, templates, components and web scripts, towards a solution that provided for rapid development and customization.
This feature was first introduiced in Alfresco 4.2 and then extended in Alfresco 5.0
If you want to build applications for Alfresco you have a number of options available to you - as mentioned you can build mobile applications (and there are SDKs available to do this).
If you want to build web applications then you have the option of either customizing the default Alfresco Share client (which is built on top of the Alfresco Surf framework using a combination of YUI 2 and Aikau). Alternatively you can built your own web client by building a new client with the Maven Aikau Archetype.
The advantage of the Surf framework is that it takes care of Alfresco authentication across all the various APIs (WebScript, CMIS, Public API, etc) as well as providing lots of security benefits (CSRF, XSS white-lists, etc).
The advantage of using Aikau is that it provides a large number of out-of-the-box widgets that are specifically designed to work with Alfresco data and address Alfresco (ECM) specific use cases.
You are of course not limited to these options - you can build an application on top of any stack you wish, but ultimately you will want to be making use of the REST APIs that the Alfresco Repository provides.
Depending upon the application you are building you may also want to build custom data models and build in workflow via Activiti BPM as well.
I have developed one spring based java web application. In my project it is requirement to use alfresco as a CMS. For this I want to integrate this application with alfresco. So I decided to use alfresco java API's.
http://dev.alfresco.com/resource/docs/java/
But I am not getting how to use those API's to complete backend work of my web application. Suppose I would like to submit one form having user name & password fields in it. After click on submit button how can I handle request in backend so it will use Alfresco java API to process request and store details in database.
I have to do many operations in my project like upload file, play with documents, Submit different forms. view those forms etc.
My first question is am I going in right direction by using alfresco java API's. if yes then how can use those API? is there any other way to do this?
Any help would be appreciate!!!
Thanks in Advance,
Kailas Salunke.
Well, based on my experience, Alfresco is an excellent ECM but not suitable for being a CMS.
Apart from that, it is difficult to give suggestions, starting from the very general overview you have given, but things like user name and password have little to do with an ECM and storing of data in a database.
You have two options available.
One involve using the Web Content Management Quick Start, it's a Spring Surf app you can (not easily in my opinion) customize for your needs.
The other solutions, if you have an existing web app, rather than develop your own API have a look at CMIS, I have put a simple wikipedia explanation, you can dig further from there.
Then, when you are ready, have a look at Alfresco CMIS first, and the most used Java API for doing CMIS call, which is Apache Chemistry
CMIS, in its intent, guarantee that Alfresco could be replaced with any other CMIS compliant ECM. You can easily integrate Apache Chemistry in your Spring app.
One of the main driving factors to use a modern work flow engine like Activiti is it’s support for cloud and multiple tenancy. Our current in house work flow engine lacks these features. So, we are planning to replace it with Activiti.
The current thought process is that we would run Activiti as a standalone (independent) application. Our Application (multiple instances) would interact with the Activiti App using the REST APIs.
Since our current work flow engine is embedded, so is its UI. This means that the work flow pages like user forms etc are rendered as part of our application. We want the UI to remain same so that the transitions for the end users is transparent. So, we cannot reuse the Activiti Explorer, let’s say be rendering Explorer pages within our UI or redirecting to Explorer UI.
This means that we would need to create a UI for Activiti within our web application. Our web application is Struts and Applet based. We are open to use HTML5 but not Spring. My thoughts are that we would need to develop a generic UI framework that would render the BPMN user forms. Are there any Struts/Applet based framework available for this. Behind the scene, an Java API would need to be developed that interact with Activiti Engine using the REST APIs.
Any thoughts/references about how I can go about developing the UI.
Even I am looking for custom UI for Activiti. Little googling has given me the below (apart from Vaadin), but did not found much help around using it for Activiti
http://www.jorambarrez.be/blog/2013/09/03/brazos-for-activiti/
https://github.com/minikomi/Bootstrap-Form-Builder
Also it seems the out-of-the-box activiti explorer UI is hard-wired and not customizable - http://forums.activiti.org/content/ui-customization. Does it mean...no one is using Activiti explorer in production?
Guidance from someone who has someone has gone through this cycle and used custom UI will be really helpful.
Another approach could be XForms. For example, Orbeon (http://www.orbeon.com/) is a java-based XForms Engine which can be used as stand-alone server. In addition, orbeon offers a servlet filter to integrate the XForms-Rendering in your own application.
We realized an XForms-Integration with Activiti and it works very well. Hope this helps.