Forum OpenACS Development: Re: Exposing all of OpenACS/]po[ via REST

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Posted by Frank Bergmann on
Hi Dave,

Sorry, you are right, you found a dependency on the ]po[ "intranet-core" package. However, there are not many of them, and they are very basic and not at the core of the REST interface. The dependencies are mostly permission checks that allow a ]po[ admin to configure user permissions to the various object types:

- im_valid_auto_login_p: Just create a stub that returns "1". For details please check intranet-core/tc/intranet-defs-procs.tcl, the procedure tests if a "auto-login token" is a valid hash of the user's password...

- im_security_alert_check_integer: Just create a stub that does nothing. The procedure performs a security check if the argument is an integer or a list of integers.

- im_header, im_footer and im_navbar: Please replace with ad_header and ad_footer or similar...

- im_object_permission: Please create a stub returning 1.

- im_permission: Please create a stub returning 1.

- im_url_with_query: Replace with "[ad_conn url]?[ad_conn form]" or similar

- im_is_user_site_wide_or_intranet_admin: Please create a stub returning 1.

- The package references a few ]po[ object types and branches into custom treatment for these types (im_categories and im_invoice_items). You can just remove these.

- The /www/index.tcl file references im_object_permission_p, which you can replace by a stub returning 1

- The intranet-rest-create.sql file will try to update a few metadata fields in acs_object_types which are extensions for ]po[, you can safely ignore them. You can also ignore any issue related to the fields im_rest_object_type.object_type_status_id and object_type_type_id and its catagories. These fields are not used, you should remove the not null and the RI constraints from the database table definition.

Cheers!
Frank

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Posted by Dave Bauer on
Hi Frank,

I am interested in the implementation of permissions. Can I just examine the intranet core package itself to learn more how these work?

I have been disucssing a similar implementation to enable REST style calls for Ajax enabled user interfaces so this is very useful work.

Thanks
Dave

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Posted by Frank Bergmann on
Hi Dave,

I am interested in the implementation of permissions

Then I would recommend you to download the file project-open-Update-3.4.0.8.0b.tgz from https://sourceforge.net/projects/project-open/files/, remove all duplicate packages and install the intranet-* packages. That should just work on top of a standard OpenACS 5.3 or 5.4 installation, at least we've successfully tested it a year ago.

Or just download one of the ]po[ installers from that Web site and install intranet-rest.

In about an hour I'll be available on Skype:frankxbergmann if you need help. I'd be happy to explain you about ]po[ "application permissions", which are based on the OpenACS permission system, but which contain application specific business logic.

Cheers!
Frank