Jean Barmash

Are you new to Alfresco, have been learning some of the concepts, studied the SDK and other simple examples out there, but are not quite sure how to bring it all together?

There are two great sample applications that you should check out. They are a gold-mine of useful information on the core repository capabilities, and Document Management. They also represent best practices in developing some types of applications that are possible with the platform.

The samples are the Records Management Module, which is a module in the main source tree that gets packaged up as a separate AMP, and the Expense Report application my colleague Yong Qu recently put together to make our own internal expense submission process easier. Records Management module is a great example of an advanced content modeling, and all the capabilities around behaviors, scheduled jobs, extending the Alfresco Web Client, and the like. The Expense application contains a lot of logic embedded in JavaScript, and is a Web 2.0-like solution that uses web scripts heavily to tie to a backend workflow.

I am going to outline what each has to offer in terms of samples you can study (along with links to the Wiki for more information).

Both:

• Packaging solution up as AMP
• Bootstrap some data and scripts into the repository
• Introduce new Space Templates for easy reuse

The Records Management Module Learning Points

• Advanced Content Model
• Core Code Written in Java, then is exposed to JavaScript
• Scheduled Tasks
• Content Behaviors

Expense Report Application Learning Points

• Advanced Workflow
• Multiple Web Scripts Interacting with each other within an AJAX Framework
• Heavy use of JavaScript no Java at all!
• Email Integration
• Space Rules

Unfortunately, the publicly available documentation is currently pretty sparse. Both of them require understanding of core Alfresco concepts ahead of time, but can be very rewarding to study.

I hope to highlight where to look for within the source of the two applications in a future post.

You can download Expense Application from the Alfresco Content Community (registration required). You can uncompress the AMP into a separate directory to view the code, as well as browse through it after you install it.

Tags: Learning, Document Management,

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 7th, 2008 at 7:29 pm and is filed under open source. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.