How to create a simple webpage using Oracle WebCenter Sites - oracle

I am new to WCMS. I need help in creating a brand new website using Oracle WebCenter Sites with more customization.
I have created the templates and pages. How do I use the assets and call the page attribute and its value in the templates?
How do I render the templates?

How do I use the assets and call the page attribute and its value in the templates?
You have to load the page asset itself first so that you get all the attributes and later you can load each attribute and display their values respectively.
<asset:load name="anyName" type='<%=ics.GetVar("c")%>' objectid='<%=ics.GetVar("cid") %>' flushonvoid="true" />
<asset:scatter name="nameAssignedOnAssetLoad" prefix="asset" />
<ics:getvar name="asset:attribute_name" />
Above code snippet loads the Page asset and now you can load individual attributes using asset:load tag (if they are basic asset type attributes) or assetset:setasset tag (if they are flex asset type attributes).
If you are more comfortable with Java, you can use OWCS Java API and follow these steps mentioned in Developers Guide
How do I render the templates?
To render a template you have to use render:calltemplate tag with appropriate attributes. This tag invokes your template, basically the code/logic that you have written within the template.
As you're new to OWCS I will suggest you to go through basic examples of read and write as mentioned in Developers Guide, they will help you a lot.
Oracle has dedicated OWCS Community wherein your queries will be answered must faster!

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How to create a custom component for Joomla 3.3?

I'm new to Joomla and I'm confused, so I need your advice on this. I have to create a plugin which connects to an API and shows base64 PDF on a page. So, I created my PDF viewer, but I don't know how to pack it up in Joomla. It's not just "custom HTML", it has to be a separate package so it can be installed on other Joomla sites. I guess it also has to have a database to store some settings (e.g. API URL). I want users who install this extension to be able to go to Modules > New Module > PDF Viewer, and from there they can set up API URL for that module. Users will be able to create modules of this type on multiple pages and to be able to set different API URL for every page. So, what do I need? An extension, component, module...? I searched for tutorials and read Joomla docs but I'm still confused. Please help me, what to do, some guide, where to put files, where to upload them etc. Thanks
You could actually go about this with a component, plugin or module:
I think a component would be the most complex in this situation. As you are probably already aware, a component is like an application which renders itself in the main click of the website.
If you were to create a plugin, you could generate a short code snippet based on the name of the plugin which could then be added to an article, which would then display the PDF within the article. For example:
{PDFgen=NAME_OF_PDF}
or
{PDF}name_of_file.pdf{/PDF}
Creating a module in my opinion would be the easiest. As once you've added the functionality to render the PDF, the user can either display it as a module (like a sidebar widget), or they can also import it in their article using a built in Joomla feature. Assign a custom position to the module, then add the following anywhere within an article: {loadposition XXX}, where XXX is the name of the custom position you assigned to the module.
Out of all honest, you should develop it in a way you feel most comfortable with. Just make sure when you do it, that you stick to Joomla coding standards.
Hope this helps

How to integrate Magnolia CMS with Spring app in limited range

I have a question to Magnolia CMS (integrated with Spring) users.
I have to write e-shop integrated with CMS where we can divide all pages into two categories:
Edited and added by admin
static pages like user account settings, shopping cart etc.
First ones, must be totally customizable by admin - I mean, admin must be able to create his own template, add text areas or graphics/video whenever he wants. He also must be able ( this is very important) to create new products which must be also stored in db to be accessible for the application code ( to fill the products list by myself in the code or to set the prices on the static admin pages).
So user can add as many products as he would like, create separate template for some of them and I have to be able to search for this products in db ( for example when user try to use search criteria). The search panel must be created by me - but where admin will place it is up to him.
The second type of pages are static pages done in JSP and I do not expect to change it using CMS.
As the second type of pages is of course not a problem, I do not know what CMS solution I should use for first type of pages.
I thought about Magnolia CMS, but as I can see all templates must be created by programmer in the code.
Also I'm not sure if it's possible to implement mechanism to maintain products ( inside the e-shop) - from one hand admin must be able to add templates for them in CMS, but I must be able to access them from the code ( to maintain them at shopping cart, make invoice etc). The product prices are set from admin panel ( static pages) as well- not from CMS of course. Maybe I can add any single product at the static pages ( insert it into the db) and somehow connect CMS page with it ?
I also need to add that main page template must be designed by HTML designer, so perhaps it would be plain HTML and this main template would be updated due to the admin needs in CMS.
Cloud anybody please advice me the best CMS solution where I can achieve all this ?
Best Regards
I've seen fair number of shops implemented that way with Magnolia where you use spring & web flow to manage a shopping cart and checkout process, while letting editors to create & customise products & categories & promos available in the shop.
You can also get similar (w/o spring) integration just by installing shop module of Magnolia. It's product and product category management might come in handy even if you were to replace checkout by your own.
To answer the other questions and stipulations
you can write your templates in ftl and models in groovy and have those hosted inside of the repository, thus giving access to them to editor and allowing her to change whatever needs to be changed. However there is also danger in that since templates are responsible for generating html, editor might be able to break html layout by making changes directly to the templates. While you want editor to create new products and modify existing ones, Magnolia lets you separate template of products from the content of products so you can let editor to edit just all the fields that you deem editable for given product without having her to ever access html or ftl directly.
as you mention, html will come from designer, so what you pbly want is to take that html, break it into functional blocks that repeat in multiple pages, save it as ftl templates and replace sample text in there with FM tags to retrieve such data from Magnolia. Actually, even better, download the STK static prototype and hand it over to your graphic designer. Tell her to create design by changing css/js/images only, but not to change structure of the html itself in the prototype, then you can truly just drop in css/js/img provided back to you by the designer.
regarding static pages - you can always serve them from Magnolia even if you don't expect anyone to ever edit them (since it usually happens sooner or later that someone wants to edit them) or you can simply configure bypass for the url for such pages and have Magnolia ignore them so they can be served by underlying application server container
to bring in Spring based application, you might consider looking in more details at and using Magnolia's Blossom module which will in turn let you annotate your spring controllers to be treated as Magnolia templates to make integration even more simple.
HTH, Jan

what is the correct approach in order to host / integrate / show my existing MVC3 project inside orchard?

I've an existing MVC3 project that implements a certain functionality, this project has it's own views, and a separate Database.
now I'm required to use the same functionality inside one of my orchard project,so I thought that I can host this solution in somewhere and view it inside an iframe or something.
Am I thinking right?,
is this the correct step to take in order to achieve this requirement inside Orchard?
to make it more clear, all I need to do is to view this solution and interact with it's controls and views from a hosting page inside orchard, and the subsequent requests should be handled by my solution in order to hit it's own data store and get back with the requested data in order to be displayed to the user.
any help would be appreciated.
Update:
thanks for Bertrand Le Roy for his answer, I can now view my solution inside my
orchard website.
I came in to one more HUGE problem, which is that my application can no longer connect to my external database.
I've a DB that is hosted in some where else, and I'm using EntityFramework to deal with it.
the problem is that if I put the connection string inside my module web.config, or main orchard web.config, I run into several types of errors like:
"System.Reflection.TargetException: Object does not match target type."
or
"System.Data.MetadataException: Unable to load the specified metadata resource."
My question is: How could I pass my connectionstring correctly to my solution, assuming that I'm using Entity framework as my ORM.
Many thanks.
You will need to put it into a module.
You will have to move route definitions to a Routes.cs file (look at any existing such file for examples).
You will also need, in order to access your data store, to opt out of the ambient Orchard transaction around the data access code (using (var scope = new TransactionScope(TransactionScopeOption.Suppress))).
If you are using dependency injection, you may have some work to move that to the Autofac-based way of doing things in Orchard.
If you want your work to appear seamlessly in the Orchard admin, you may want to decorate your admin controllers with the Admin attribute. If you want your front-end to use the current theme, you'll have to add Themed attributes and maybe refactor your views so that they only emit HTML for the content zone instead of for the whole page.
Add a manifest (module.txt) to your module folder and you should be good to go.

MVC sitemap provider & css styling

Does anyone know how to customise the rendering of the MVC sitemap provider so my ul element has a specific css class?
Try MvcSiteMapProvider hosted on CodePlex. You should be able to fairly easily migrate your existing Sitemap file to the slightly different but essentially compatible format. This will give you the ability to output your sitemap using the simple Html.MvcSiteMap().SiteMap() helper method.
The source of the project includes the default templates which you can edit to produce any rendering you like...or just pass in the name of a template in accordance with MVC convention. The model types you'll be rendering are SiteMapHelperModel, SiteMapNodeModel and SiteMapNodeModelList (namespaces removed for terseness).
I appreciate this may not be exactly what you're after as it relies on a 3rd party tool but its a useful project that supports much more than just rendering sitemaps. You'll want version 3.0.0 for MVC3.
Dan

How to create my own form in joomla

I want to create my own form that are submitted and values of that form will be stored in joomla database. How can i used the Joomla connection code to interacte with the joomla database.
If you just want to get your work done, there are some components already avaiable in Joomla Extension's website to your form's needs. CkForms is a good one, you can create simple forms with it that are automatically saved in the database (supports upload of files too).
If you want to learn how to write extensions in Joomla, you should read Joomla Official Documentation website.
Extensions in Joomla are divided in "Components", "Modules" and "Plugins". More informations about these differences can be found here and here.
What you're trying to achieve sounds a "component" to me. Downloading the CkForms and reading it's source code should get you started to Joomla's way of writing components.
EDIT: Joomla has a huge API with a lot of features. It has a database module of it's own, with insert methods and such. Reading Joomla's API website before implementing your component it's a good idea to avoid "reinventing the wheel" and it's a good practice since those methods are extensively tested by all Joomla users.
The JForm class helps you build forms.
Documentation can be found here:
joomla CMS: http://docs.joomla.org/API16:JForm
joomla API: http://api.joomla.org/11.4/Joomla-Platform/Form/JForm.html
This class provides you with ready to use form elements and form loading and/or processing methods
This class includes validation methods, date picker control, color picker, etc.
Of course, as another mentioned above, if you are building a module, component, or application, you will need to learn how to to develop a module, component or application. Of these three, the module is the easiest to implement.
The application gives you much freedom b/c you are not constrained to the CMS paradigm, front and back end complexities. However, there is little documentation about how to develop applications with Joomla framework b/c joomla as a framework is relatively new
This tutorial gets you started understanding how to use JForm to create a form in Joomla: http://www.ostraining.com/blog/how-tos/development/getting-started-with-jform/
Or you could just create add a html module to any position and then write the form in html i.e.
<form method="post" action="mycreatedpage.php"> <input type="text"/> <input type="submit">
Now just create a page that handles the code by emailing or inserting into db. I havent tried it but i think it should work.
Looks like everyone already told you almost everything I know except for the component creator. Very easy to use, and it follows Joomla standards. Will get you up and running within minutes.
I have got good working experience with Joomla RSForm Pro. It has got options for
validation
user email/admin emails on submit
file uploads
and many more
Good tutorials too. Get started with http://www.rsjoomla.com/support/documentation/view-knowledgebase/21-rsform-pro.html
Good luck!
Create View.
Create Model.
Create Table.
Create Controller ( if Needed ).
Create Form xml file.
Go here for more information:
http://docs.joomla.org/Standard_form_field_types
Take a look at the Chronoforms extension - does more than you want.
You have two options:
Use an already built custom form extension
Create your own custom form extension (or outsource it)
Now if you only want to modify the user registration form, then you can do some PHP customization to accomplish your goal.
Making forms in Joomla can be done in a couple of ways.
If you just wanted a contact us, you can just create a page with a menu item for the User contact form. This gives you a page with a Members address and contact form. So all you would need to do was add the user as the company of the websites home address and email. But the form is very basic, name, title, textarea for message.
Next up from that you could just make a Custom HTML module add add a form to it in plain HTML like +Sean said above this, you would need to code in PHP your own form process script. You would not get error in form data checking unless you also wrote it.
Next you might rather look on the Joomla Extension Directory JED for one of the good extensions for 3 and 2.5 Joomla RSForms!Pro is good, and can do all we have needed. This lets you add fields one by one and move your form around. Then can auto generate or custom the html of the form.
You can easily create your own forms with Fabrik
Chronoforms are now a days a very popular solution for custom forms in joomla. Chornoforms support twitter bootstrap also. In simple 5 steps you can create a contact form with unlimited fields and also embed various function like DB save, Email, Thanks Message, Redirection on any page. There is events and events will have particular events.
Also possibility of extension of Normal joomla registeration. It will not extend the core registration but at the time of registration you can take various information from users.
I would use Chrono Forms, they work really well and are easy to use.
Download here
Here is a full tutorial on the new Chronoforms 5 to help you get started quickly and understand most of the features available.
CLICK HERE
You can use plugin to insert external php form in content. It is easy and you don't need to make plugin etc. Please use this.
I suggest you to use breezingforms: http://crosstec.de/en/extensions/joomla-forms-download.html
It's one of the best solutions for custom form creation in joomla.

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