Integrating Alfresco with Liferay 6.1

Hello Friends.  It's been a long I am posting to my blog. In my previous post Liferay Alfresco Integration , I explained how to integrate Liferay 6 (CE or EE) with Alfresco 3.3(or higher).  Both the integration methods explained in the post have their own advantages and limitations (which also I have mentioned in the post). The CMISHook was being used as a means to store Liferay's document library's low-level data.  This had two limitations: (1) It was showing up all these low lever information numbers in the CMIS Repository system which are not of any use from the user perspective and (2) If we change anything in that repository, it would screw up Liferay because things were not synchronized.


With the latest version (Liferay 6.1), Liferay has come up with some really cool features which makes it very easy to integrate Liferay with alfresco and many other CMS systems (like sharepoint, documentum etc). It eliminates all the limitations of CMIS Hook as well as it let's us mount multiple repositories to one document. 


Following are the steps to configure Liferay 6.1 (with tomcat bundle) with Alfresco 3.4d. 

1. Download Alfresco(Community or Enterprise edition) and follow the installation instructions. You can download it from following URLs:

Community Edition: http://wiki.alfresco.com/wiki/Download_Community_Edition

Enterprise Edition: http://www.alfresco.com/try/    (30-Days trial version)

You can install it with an inbuilt tomcat and mysql bundle or you can install it on any existing application server and connect it to existing mysql database. I have done it with inbuilt tomcat bundle and connected to my existing mysql database. The installation wizard let's you configure all these stuff.

2. Download and install Liferay 6.1 (EE or CE). You can download it from http://www.liferay.com/downloads/liferay-portal/available-releases

3. Start Alfresco. 

4.  Liferay passes user credentials through CMIS to the alfresco in order to connect. To enable liferay to do so, we need to enter following property in portal-ext.properties which will allow liferay to store password in session. 

session.store.password=true 




4. Also one more thing we need to take into consideration is that: Liferay passes logged in user's credentials to CMIS Repository (alfresco here) as described in step 4. What this means is that userid/password in liferay must match userid/password in Alfresco. Alfresco by default uses a loginid (which is similar to screen-name in liferay) to authenticate user. So we need to make liferay also authenticate using screen name by making following entry into portal-ext.properties.

company.security.auth.type=screenName

5. Now we are good to move ahead. Let's start Liferay. 

6. Login as administrator and go to control panel. 

7. Click on Document and Media which will bring up a screen similar to following:

Liferay 6.1 Document Library

7. Click on Add -> New Repository as shown in following image. 

8. This will bring up following screen where you basically provide connection details to connect to Alfresco. 

9. Specify following details:

Name: Give any name you want to give to your repository view in liferay. For example, I will give Alfresco

Description: A brief description about it. 

Repository Type: You can connect either using AtomPub or using web services. For this example, I will use AtomPub. 

AtomPub URL: This will be the CMIS repository URL where you alfresco is running. In my case, it's http://localhost:8080/alfresco/service/api/cmis (Note: In case of Alfresco 4.0, it will be http://host:port/alfresco/cmisatom) 

Repository ID: It is not required field.  It is basically used to connect to a specific repository incase we have multiple repositories available. If we do not enter a repositoryId, then it will just look for the first repository using the given parameters and set it to that.

10. Click on Save button. Liferay will try connecting to Alfresco using information we just provided in step 9 and will show success or failure message.  If it's failure, just make sure that the connectivity information we have provided in step 9 is correct. 

11. On successful connection, you will be able to see a folder view of your Alfresco in your Liferay's document and media as following. 

Now, you will be able to upload your documents from Liferay to Alfresco by simply uploading to this folder. This is synchronized completely. It means that if you upload any document from Liferay, you will be able to see the same from Alfresco's web portal. If you delete any document from alfresco's using it's web portal, it will reflect the changes in liferay's document and media section.  Isn't it cool ?

That's it for this post. Next, I'll try to connect alfresco using web services or may be share point with liferay. 

Feel free to provide any comments/suggestions/enhancements. 

Opening Portlet with Maximized Window in Render Mode

There is no provision in portlet API for opening a portlet with maximized window in render mode (doView() method). When a portlet gets loaded into browser for the first time, it always opens up in normal window.

I happened to come across a scenario where I had to open-up portlet in a maximized window which I achieved in following way:

javax.portlet.PortletURL object allows to set Window State. We can utilize this facility in following way to open a portlet with maximized window in render (doView() method) mode.

1. In doView method, Generate a render URL from renderResponse.

2. Add all the request parameters from renderRequest to these new URL.

3. Set window state to Maximized on this new URL.

4. Set this new URL value as renderRequest attribute and pass the control to view.jsp (your jsp file which generates output in render mode).

5. In view.jsp, retreive the URL we created in step-1 and redirect the page to this new URL using javascript by setting location.href value.

That's it. Next time, when the portlet will be rendered, it will open up in Maximized mode.

Following is the piece of code for both doView() method of Portlet class and view.jsp.

In Portlet Class,

public void doView(RenderRequest renderRequest, RenderResponse renderResponse) throws IOException, PortletException

    {

      

        if(renderRequest.getWindowState() != WindowState.MAXIMIZED)

        {

            //Create a render URL

            PortletURL url = renderResponse.createRenderURL();

          

            //Pass all the parameters from existing request to this new URL

            Enumeration params = renderRequest.getParameterNames();

          

            while(params.hasMoreElements())

            {

                String pname = params.nextElement().toString();

                url.setParameter(pname, renderRequest.getParameter(pname));

            }

          

            //Set window state to Maximized on newly created URL

            url.setWindowState(WindowState.MAXIMIZED);

          

            //Set this URL as attribute in renderRequerst

            renderRequest.setAttribute("maximizedUrl", url.toString());

          

          

            renderRequest.setAttribute("isMaximized", "false");

          

        }

        include(viewJSP, renderRequest, renderResponse);

    }

   

protected void include(String path, RenderRequest renderRequest,RenderResponse renderResponse) throws IOException, PortletException

{

            PortletRequestDispatcher portletRequestDispatcher =

                                               getPortletContext().getRequestDispatcher(path);

            if (portletRequestDispatcher == null)

            {

                Logger.error(path + " is not a valid include");

            }

            else

            {

                portletRequestDispatcher.include(renderRequest, renderResponse);

            }

}

In view.jsp,

<%@ taglib uri="http://java.sun.com/portlet_2_0" prefix="portlet"%>

<jsp:useBean class="java.lang.String" id="maximizedUrl"

    scope="request" />

<jsp:useBean class="java.lang.String" id="isMaximized"

    scope="request" />

<portlet:defineObjects />

<script type="text/javascript">

    var maximizedFlag = '<%=isMaximized%>';

   

    //Redirect to New Render URL only if current window is not in maximized state

    if(maximizedFlag=='false')

    {

        location.href='<%=maximizedUrl%>';  

    }
</script>

 

Liferay Alfresco Integration

With the time, Liferay and Alfresco have matured in terms of capabilities, both the products have their own focal point in terms of offerings. Where liferay's main focus is collaboration features, Alfresco is better in document management and record management.  With this said, there are many scenarios where need rises to integrate both the systems in order to provide better software solutions and architectures.  

There are multiple ways we can integrate alfresco with liferay. I will explain two of them which I have used along with benefits/drawbacks which I know. 

Method-1. Integrating Alfresco with Liferay using CMIS 1.0

Content Management Interoperability Services (CMIS) - is a standard protocol which consists a set of web services for sharing information among different content management systems to provide interoperability and integration for people and applications using multiple content repositories.

Liferay 6 and Alfresco 3.3 both provides CMIS support. Here I will explain how to integrate Alfresco 3.3 (or higher) with Liferay 6 (Tomcat Bundle). 

1. Download Alfresco(Community or Enterprise edition) share.war and alfresco.war (version 3.3 or higher). You can download it from following URLs.

Community Edition: http://wiki.alfresco.com/wiki/Download_Community_Edition

Enterprise Edition: http://www.alfresco.com/try/    (30-Days trial version)

2. Download and install Liferay 6 (EE or CE). ou can download it from http://www.liferay.com/downloads/liferay-portal/available-releases

3. Copy alfresco.war and share.war from $ALFRESCO_HOME/tomcat/webapps to  $LIFERAY_HOME/tomcat/webapps.

4. Create a database alfresco in MySQL. (Assuming you are using MySQL database)

drop database if exists alfresco;

create database alfresco character set utf8;

grant all on alfresco.* to 'alfresco'@'localhost' identified by 'alfresco' with grant option;

grant all on alfresco.* to 'alfresco'@'localhost.localdomain' identified by 'alfresco' with grant option;

5. Create a database lportal in MySQL. (Assuming you are using MySQL database)

drop database if exists lportal;

create database lportal character set utf8;

grant all on lportal.* to 'lportal'@'localhost' identified by 'lportal' with grant option;

grant all on lportal.* to 'lportal'@'localhost.localdomain' identified by 'lportal' with grant option;

6. Create a file named portal-ext.properties at $LIFERAY_HOME/tomcat/webapps/ROOT/WEB-INF/classes and add following lines in portal-ext.properties.

dl.hook.impl=com.liferay.documentlibrary.util.CMISHook

cmis.credentials.username=admin

cmis.credentials.password=admin

cmis.repository.url=http://localhost:8080/alfresco/service/api/cmis (NOTE: This URL will be the URL where you alfresco is running. Change the value accordingly)

cmis.repository.version=1.0

cmis.system.root.dir=Liferay Home

7. Add Database entry in portal-ext.properties (Assuming you are using MySQL database)

             ## MySQL
             jdbc.default.driverClassName=com.mysql.jdbc.Driver
             jdbc.default.url=jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306/lportal?useUnicode=true&characterEncoding=UTF- 

            8&useFastDateParsing=false (Change according to your DB settings)
            jdbc.default.username=lportal (Change according to your DB settings)
            jdbc.default.password=lportal (Change according to your DB settings)

8. That's it. Start Liferay and you are through. Whatever documents you create from Liferay Document Library will directly get stored into Alfresco. 

Advantages:

This integration method enables us to run both liferay and alfresco independently from each other and still have a nice level of integration for document management.  

Disadvantages:

a. When any document is created/uploaded in liferay document library it stores document meta-data in liferay data store and actual document in Alfresco. 

So if you store any document directly from Alfresco, it doesn't get reflected in Liferay document library. 

b. Alfresco maps the document hierarchy with it's own numeric notations: For example, if a document named MyInfo.pdf is stored under Document Library -> My Docs -> Personal Info -> MyInfo.pdf in liferay, alfresco maps it similar to following: 

Liferay Home -> 10232(this is liferay instance id) -> 10280 (this is liferay folder id) - > 1 (numerically named folder created for each document uploaded from Liferay) ->1 (Actual document named as 1)

This mapping notation makes it very difficult to track the documents directly from Alfresco.  Also since the meta-data information is stored in liferay, when we try to open document directly from alfresco, it fails. 

c. When we delete any document from liferay, it only deletes the meta-data information. The actual document remains stored in alfresco. 

Method-2. Integrating Alfresco Web Client as portlet in Liferay

This method deploys alfersco.war (web client) as portlet in liferay.  Following are the stes to achieve this:

1. Download Alfresco(Community or Enterprise edition)  alfresco.war (version 3.3 or higher). You can download it from following URLs.

Community Edition: http://wiki.alfresco.com/wiki/Download_Community_Edition

Enterprise Edition: http://www.alfresco.com/try/    (30-Days trial version)

2. Download and install Liferay 6 (EE or CE). ou can download it from http://www.liferay.com/downloads/liferay-portal/available-releases

3. Extract(Unzip) alfresco.war to any directory of your choice.

4. Update dir.root in $ALFRESCO_HOME/ WEB-INF/classes/alfresco/repository.propertes.

      

     dir.root=../../alf_data

5. Create a database alfresco in MySQL. (Assuming you are using MySQL database)

drop database if exists alfresco;

create database alfresco character set utf8;

grant all on alfresco.* to 'alfresco'@'localhost' identified by 'alfresco' with grant option;

grant all on alfresco.* to 'alfresco'@'localhost.localdomain' identified by 'alfresco' with grant option;

6. Remove the file from WEB-INF/lib/portlet-api-lib.jar 

7.  Add /WEB-INF/faces-config.xml to the faces config files list at $ALFRESCO_HOME/WEB-INF/web.xml like

     <context-param>

      <param-name>javax.faces.CONFIG_FILES</param-name>

      <param-value>/WEB-INF/faces-config.xml,/WEB-INF/faces-config-app.xml,/WEB-INF/faces-config-beans.xml,/WEB-INF/faces-config-navigation.xml,/WEB-INF/faces-config-common.xml,/WEB-INF/faces-config-repo.xml,/WEB-INF/faces-config-wcm.xml,/WEB-INF/faces-config-custom.xml</param-value>

</context-param>

8. Download and add files: faces-config.xml, liferay-display.xml, liferay-portlet.xml, portlet.xml to WEB-INF. You can

      download these files from http://liferay.cignex.com/palm_tree/0387/sso/liferay/alfresco-portlet/

9. Package all files as a WAR: alfresco.war and copy it to $LIFERAY_HOME/deploy folder.

10. Start Liferay and you are through. All the alfresco portlets will be available under Alfresco category from the Add dropdown menu. 

Advantages:

This method lets you run alfresco web client directly as portlet under liferay and removes complexity of maintaining two separate systems.   

Disadvantages:

We have to manually edit the source files of alfresco.war. 

Feel free to provide any comments/suggestions/enhancements.