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WCM and beyond

WCM features can be extended using the WCM APIs and JSP files.

This article discusses the following topics:

• Overview of the WCM API
• New features in the WCM 6.1 API
• Library Management API
• Syndication API

WCM APIs introduction

The Lotus Web Content Management API is focused on processing the content programmatically. It is an alternative way to access a Web content management (WCM) site. It allows content and other WCM objects to be created, edited, deleted, and rendered entirely by using Java code. Additionally, clients can manipulate their site and integrate WCM with other applications in a way that was not previously possible.

The API offers only a subset of Lotus Web Content Management's functionality, although it is a very useful subset.

Typical API scenarios may include the following examples:

• Create a taxonomy from a comma delimited file
• Bulk resource import
• Content search
• Perform search and retrieval operations, such as finding a given object by name, or finding content based on a workflow stage
• Integrate WCM with third-party applications.

WCM API

The Lotus Web Content Management API provides a way to programmatically access the core Web content management (WCM) classes. The Lotus Web Content Management API but provides a means to access the core classes, which, in turn, access the repository of content, components, categories, and so on.

The following figure illustrates the way in which the WCM repository is accessed.

Following are the limited set of functions available when using the IBM ® Lotus Web Content Management™ API.

• Web content libraries:

• Moving or copying items within a library.
• Moving or copying items between libraries.

• Search iterators of item IDs:

• Find item of given type by name.
• Find items of given type.
• Find library components by name.
• Find content by authoring template.
• Find content by category.
• Find content by path.
• Find content by workflow stage.
• Find content modified since date.
• Find content modified between dates.

• Content search (similar to the Menu Component search criteria but using item parameters as ids).
• Retrieve via item IDs.
• The ability to create, delete and save the following items:

• Content
• Sites
• Site Areas
• File Resource components
• HTML components
• Image components
• Date and Time components
• Link components
• Number components
• Rich text components
• Style Sheet components
• Short text components
• Text components
• User Selection components

• The ability to retrieve the following items:

• Content
• Sites
• Site areas
• Taxonomies and categories
• Workflows
• Components

• The ability to retrieve the following items from searches, (but NOT as an item):

• Authoring Template ID (Authoring Template)
• Presentation Template ID (Presentation Template)
• Workflow Stage ID

• The ability to approve or reject content items in a workflow stage. Other item-types do not support this function.

The following features are not available using the API:

• The creation, update or deleting of workflows, workflow stages, workflow actions, taxonomies, categories, syndicators, subscribers, presentation templates, authoring templates, and components not specified above.

New features in the WCM 6.1 API

• Create custom workflow actions - More details are covered in the section on creating a custom workflow.
  • Set of API to allow custom code to be invoked as part of the WCM Workflow process e.g. To create workflow actions such as Achieve, more email notifications, etc.,
• Dynamic workflow approvers
  • New methods are added to com.ibm.workplace.wcm.api.Content to change approvers
  • Approvers can be added or removed
  • Approver access can be checked
• Library Services
  • The library service exposes APIs to create, save, copy, export and import WCM libraries
• Library Document list
  • Enables to export a list of information about all web content artifacts in a library
• Manage syndication
  • Set of API to allow dynamic control of syndication

New Workspace Methods

• New set of findBy methods to simplify retrieval of content by workflow state (published, draft, expired, and any combination of these) are added.
• New methods to build better performing solutions are also added. Optimized retrieval of items for rendering and read operations when asReference is set to true
  • getById(DocumentId id, boolean asReference)
  • getByIds(DocumentIdIterator documentIterator, boolean asReference)
• Choice to use common name (default) or distinguished name to use with workspace. This is also configurable in WCMConfigService.properties file by the property api.use.dn = false. Each workspace can override this by setting calling useDistinguishedNames (boolean distinguishedNames).

Dynamic workflow approvers

• New methods are added to com.ibm.workplace.wcm.api.Content to change approvers
• Allows approvers can be added or removed.
  • addApprovers(String[] approvers)
  • removeApprovers(String[] approvers)
• Allows to check for approver access
  • hasApproverAccess()

Library Management API

Library Management APIs allows easier management of libraries through the WCM Admin UI and WCM API. WCM Admin UI could be used to delete library and for reporting. WCM Library management API could be used to create copy, save, delete, export, import, set library access, output document list to stream

com.ibm.workplace.wcm.api.WebContentLibraryService enables access to Web Content Library methods through Portal services. WebContentLibraryService is available as a service and can be retrieved as below

WebContentLibraryService webContentLibraryService = (WebContentLibraryService) ctx.lookup("portal:service/wcm/WebContentLibraryService");

Library Document List

Method outputDocumentListToStream on the com.ibm.workplace.wcm.api.WebContentLibraryService can be used to export a list of information about the web content artifacts in a library. And the output can be directed to a CSV file with each document in a single row using the com.ibm.workplace.wcm.api.CSVDocumentListWriter. Example output of the document list would look like below

Custom writer can also be written by implementing the com.ibm.workplace.wcm.api.DocumentListWriter. One application of this API is to write a tool to compare exported lists from a syndicator and a subscriber to check if all expected items are syndicated to the subscriber system.

Syndication API

The main purpose of this API is to dynamically control syndication. Main functionalities of this API would include –

• Enable, disable syndicators and subscribers
• Start full or partial updates
• Dynamically check syndication updates to see if its running
• View syndicator or subscriber details – Name, libraries being syndicated
• Last Syndication details – Items updated, saved, modified, removed

com.ibm.workplace.wcm.api.SyndicationService enables access to control syndication between syndicator and subscriber . SyndicationService is available as a service and can be retrieved as below

SyndicationService syndicationService = (SyndicationService) ctx.lookup("portal:service/wcm/SyndicationService");