Slide deck to accompany Tech Talk Live webinar on Alfresco and Drupal integrations

1. WCM Solutions with Drupal and Alfresco
Wednesday 7th March 2012
With Ian Norton and Jeff Potts

2. About Ian Norton
• 8 Years content management experience."
• Alfresco & Drupal."
• Created the Drupal CMIS Views module."

3. Introduction
• Why would you integrate?"
• Integration considerations."
• User management."
• Integration options."
• The Alfresco Partner site & CMIS Views"
• How it works."
• Questions and answers."

4. Why would you want to integrate?
An integrated solution provides:
• Document management."
• Web presentation management."
• Seamless presentation of documents in the web
browser."

5. Integration considerations."
Push!
• Drupal treated as a deployment target (Richard
McKnight has built this in the AVM)."
Pull!
• The CMIS Module uses a pull mechanism."
• CMIS Sync actually pulls the content and creates a
copy in Drupal."
• Some of the other modules just pull a CMIS folder
object and display them."

6. User Management"
• Consider User Management Carefully."
• Do you want your users to be authenticated against
Alfresco when they login to Drupal?"
• Consider ‘safe’ folders in Alfresco that are accessible
with a generic ‘drupal’ user."
"

7. Integration options."
PHP CMIS Wrapper
• Written by Richard McKnight."
• Contributed to Apache Chemistry."
• Used by Drupal, Wordpress, SugarCRM."
• http://chemistry.apache.org/php/phpclient.html"
"
"

8. Integration options."
Drupal Alfresco Project
• Drupal 6"
• Works with Alfresco 2.x & 3.x"
• Uses SOAP"
• http://drupal.org/project/alfresco"
"

9. Integration options."

10. Integration options."
Canopy: A Drupal / Alfresco Integrated Solution
• Web Services, REST API’s, CMIS"
• Create pages in Drupal, workflow in Alfresco."
• Two way process, create in Alfresco or Drupal."
• Good for advanced workflow + publishing directly from
Alfresco"
• http://www.appnovation.com/canopy/"

11. Integration options."
Drupal CMIS API
• Query, Browse & Sync modules."
• Good for managing documents in Alfresco and then
surfacing them in Drupal."
• Ideal platform to build on."
• Richard McKnight’s CMIS PHP Wrapper."
• Used by 277 sites."
• http://drupal.org/project/cmis"

12. Drupal CMIS API
$conf['cmis_repositories'] = array(!
'default' => array (!
'user' => 'admin', !
'password' => 'admin', !
'url' => 'http://localhost:8080/alfresco/service/cmis'!
)!
);!

13. Integration options."
Drupal CMIS Views
• Built for Alfresco Team later extended."
• Takes a folder path and returns a PHP object."
• Allows blocks of CMIS content to be themed by Drupal."
• Built on the Drupal CMIS API."
• Used on Alfresco Team, Partners and forthcoming
dotcom."
• http://drupal.org/project/cmis_views"

14. Introducing CMIS Views

15. Demo time
• Uploading from Drupal via CMIS browser"
• Displaying in Drupal site as a themed block."

16. So what’s happening?
• The Alfresco folder path is sent to the CMIS API to
determine it’s objectID using
‘cmisapi_getObjectByPath’"
• The preferences for the view are saved to the
database including the theme information."
• At runtime Drupal executes a query based on the
objectID – it also joins the Alfresco cm:titled aspect
which isn’t supported by default."
• Drupal themes the block dependent on the users
selection."

17. So what’s happening?
• The Alfresco folder reference is saved in Drupal."
• ‘select d.cmis:name, t.cm:description, t.cm:title, d.cmis:lastModificationDate,
d.cmis:contentStreamMimeType, d.cmis:objectId, d.cmis:contentStreamLength
from cmis:document as d join cm:titled as t on d.cmis:objectid = t.cmis:objectid
where in_folder(d, '" . $uuid . "') ORDER BY d.cmis:name ASC’"
• We can change the theme retrospectively and even
change the folder that we point to."
• Permissions are created to view and administer CMIS
Views."
"

18. Future Plans
• CMIS Sync, entities in Drupal 7."
• CMIS Views, becomes a views plugin."
• CMIS Search, offers federated search across the two
systems."

19. CMIS Views as views plugin

20. In Summary
• CMIS offers a quick solution."
• Best of both worlds application."
• Get involved at addons.alfresco.com and drupal.org"

21. WCM Solutions with Drupal and Alfresco
Any questions?"