Forum OpenACS CMS: Getting content in and out of OpenACS

1: Getting content in and out of OpenACS

Posted by Dave Bauer on 09/21/03 04:00 PM

Over in another thread about WYSIWYG editors https://openacs.org/forums/message-view?message_id=124965 , a discussion about how to get content into OpenACS started. To keep focused I have started a new thread.

OpenACS coding efforts have mainly focused on the community aspects of the software. One area that is important, but not focused on as much is content management. While those who use OpenACS believe community aspects are important, most web sites also need some plain old content.

The content repository package offers some good basic features to handle content, but no user interface. The existing CMS package has many good features hidden beneath a confusing user interface.

Here is what content management features OpenACS supports currently, with a bit of coding effort to expose them from a user interface.

* Addition of content through traditional browser based textarea, simple richtext widget, or file upload.
* Storage of content in the database, or in the filesystem
* Assignment of templates to style content, including the ability to assign different templates to content depending on the context.
* Upload of content through a web browser form including binary formats such as .DOC, .PDF and images.
* CR supports muli-part content items, such that a "page" can consist of several content items, which can be text, images etc.
* Publish of content, combined with templates if applicable, to the filesystem under the www pageroot.
* Probably some other stuff I am not thinking of right now.

There is currently work on fixing up ETP, although it is quite ans effort because it goes off on it's own, instead of using built in features.

There is also another CMS project called BCMS that is available from the contrib directory.

Here are notes on discussion of where to take content management:

https://openacs.org/forums/message-view?message_id=113657

2: Re: Getting content in and out of OpenACS - webDAV (response to 1)

Posted by Dave Bauer on 09/21/03 04:09 PM

webDAV http://www.webdav.org is an HTTP extension to allow content creation and editing via methods other than a textarea.

What is interesting about hooking webDAV up to the OpenACS database is the ability to manage content in different packages in a consistent manner. For example, file-storage is an ideal application for webDAV, because it already mimics a filesystem. Another application would be photo-album where photos could be added via webDAV. A more fanciful application would be webDAV upload of a presentation into the wimpypoint package that could reformat the presentation for the web.

Another very usefull application is allowing web designers access to upload adp templates without needing shell access to the web server.

There is (was?) an effort to build a consistent rich user interface for Open Source CMS products using Mozilla and XUL that used webDAV to access content: http://www.oscom.org/projects/twingle

Besides all these, most content management systems support webDAV so its an interesting bulllet point on the feature list.

3: Re: Getting content in and out of OpenACS (response to 1)

Posted by Malte Sussdorff on 09/21/03 04:19 PM

I talked to one guy from Midgard, that is also a driving force behind OSCOM and he mentioned that he would be more than happy to see us use twingle, which is by no means dead.

As I got a little bit distracted the last couple of weeks, I did not follow up there, but I definitly will within the next week and get more information from them.

Especially if we adopt twingle it seems we have a good stand in joining OSCOM. Something which would not be such a bad idea, especially as they tend to help out each others plattform with regards to standards like twingle (on the last conference they apparently implemented twingle for two plattforms in a three day hacking session).

Talking about hacking sessions, wouldn't it be fun to have camp, where OpenACS hackers would meet to get some core work done? Let's start a different thread ;).

4: Re: Getting content in and out of OpenACS (response to 1)

Posted by Tom Jackson on 09/21/03 09:54 PM

According to the WebDAV faq:

A final goal of DAV is to leverage the success of HTTP in being a standard access layer for a wide range of storage repositories -- HTTP gave them read access, while DAV gives them write access.

Dudes: OpenACS has allowed write access for some time now! All, or most files in OpenACS probably shouldn't be manipulated via WebDAV, since they need to be in CVS.

Locking

Locking? Hello! How do you plan on locking database content? Even if you can, why? Doesn't CVS already handle this situation, much better? BTW, this is the main point of WebDAV. For CR data, you have all revisions already. If two folks update, you can always choose another revision.

WebDAV is a protocol.

That means we still need an API to access OpenACS data. However, if you are going to construct an API, why not just do it in HTTP?

Minimum you need to be able to get?object=myobject&attribute=myattribute&id=123 Then similar procedures for update/delete.

5: Re: Getting content in and out of OpenACS (response to 1)

Posted by Dave Bauer on 09/22/03 02:34 AM

Tom,

Sure you need an API for webDAV. That is true. You can also create your own HTTP based access, that will also need to be programmed. If you create your own HTTP based access method you also need to write your own client software.

With webDAV there is a consistent interface between web content and authoring client software, or at least that is the goal. I think its still a work in progress.

Of course, noone is required to use a webDAV interface, and the existence of webDAV does not limit to using a more traditional HTTP access method.

There are already several HTTP based access methods for web site content, and it would also be nice to have that feature available for OpenACS developers and users.

I do think you are misunderstanding the goals of webDAV and who we are thinking about here. I am trying to make it easier for content editors who work in MS Word or whatever. These editors do not have shell access or CVS access to the web site. Even if I would grant them this access, they don't want to learn another tool.

For web site programmers, CVS is the best way to change how the web site works.

If these roles are combined, maybe webDAV is not the best way to go. It would just be one more option for those who choose it.

6: Re: Getting content in and out of OpenACS (response to 1)

Posted by Tom Jackson on 09/22/03 09:00 AM

I just want someone to walk me through this. I'm sitting in front of my word processor. I want to edit data for my website. What is the process. Imagine I have, instead of AOLserver/OpenACS, I have IIS/SQL Server. How would I edit some field in that? Remember, I'm just a content writer, no programming. Is there some ms document somewhere that describes the way this is done? Is anyone doing this?

What scares me is that vendors are free to add protocol on top of WebDAV to add "value" to their product. That probably means their product doesn't work very well with just any other software, you need to get server/client from the same vendor. Considering ms is involved, what else should we expect?

From the WebDAV.org FAQ:

Now, with that said: it is possible for a company to state compliance with the DAV protocol. On top of that protocol, at the application level, they can do things that are special between their client and server. That is where application vendors will add value, and it is a standard part of doing business. If a server provides better application-level support, then you may end up tied to that particular server if you want that functionality. You are free to choose your DAV server, but recognize that you may lose functionality. Your choice, though.

I would love to have this concept, as described, work. Everyone would, I'm sure. Getting a better editor to work with OpenACS would be a selling point.

So for now I'll just ask if we can brainstorm for a bit:

What do we want WebDAV to do for us?
Where is WebDAV doing this right now in a similar setup, i.e. a real database?
What do we need to do to get there?
Is the effort worth the payoff?

7: Re: Getting content in and out of OpenACS (response to 1)

Posted by Jun Yamog on 09/22/03 11:05 AM

We can thank Talli already for investing in WebDav. I think its on its 2nd stage. They are moving from C implementation to Tcl implementation. Not sure if it together with aol4 webdav or a different one.

If BCMS does go 1.0 (I hope :)). Atleast for 1.1 I would like to have a bcms-ui-webdav package. Or something like that. Although I don't have much knowledge in WebDAV. So I can't really comment anything. But it would be nice to concentrate on the backend and leave it to dav enabled client like dreamweaver/twingle to put the content.