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Shared session instance

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benjamin.dougherty

Shared session instance

Hi,

We are developing a Torch Portal MVC application running in separate deployment mode, we have developed several portlets and so far used public render parameters to pass information via portlets. As we add more complexity we have an increasing requirement to provide a mechanism to communicate instance information via portlets asynchronously or without a full page load.

One approach we have considered is the possibility to have a shared instance which can be access from any independent form that shares the same session state.

Our goal is to have a form write to a shared instance and have other forms with binding to that instance be updated as they would for a document instance.

Does this exist currently? If not do you have any suggestions as to how we can solve this issue?

Thanks,
Ben.

Hank Ratzesberger-3

Re: Shared session instance

Hi Ben,

On Fri, Feb 17, 2012 at 5:48 AM, benjamin.dougherty <[hidden email]> wrote:

Hi,

We are developing a Torch Portal MVC application running in separate
deployment mode, we have developed several portlets and so far used public
render parameters to pass information via portlets. As we add more
complexity we have an increasing requirement to provide a mechanism to
communicate instance information via portlets asynchronously or without a
full page load.

One approach we have considered is the possibility to have a shared instance
which can be access from any independent form that shares the same session
state.

Our goal is to have a form write to a shared instance and have other forms
with binding to that instance be updated as they would for a document
instance.

To my knowledge, binding, ( <xforms:bind> elements) can only apply to data

instances declared in the form. The forms are isolated from one another.

Does this exist currently? If not do you have any suggestions as to how we
can solve this issue?

In Orbeon, you can call xpl or other web services using the extension function

xxforms:call-xpl() or regular xforms:submit (element). In both cases, there would

need to be <xforms:action> elements and/or src= attributes to instances to

call REST/GET style web services to initialize instance data when the

form is created and/or based on other events.

I cannot immediately think of a way to signal to an xform that some external

data has changed (unlike calculate and other bind attributes). The

xforms-model-construct-done event will be passed to the model element, so

you can know when the xform is ready after initialization to make submissions

or actions to complete the data initialization from the shared source.

Let me know if that makes some sense.

Cheers,

Hank

Thanks,
Ben.

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Hank Ratzesberger

XMLWerks.com

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Erik Bruchez

Re: Shared session instance

Administrator

In reply to this post by benjamin.dougherty

Ben,

This does not exist currently.

You could use the session to exchange information, for example with
the XPath functions, xxforms:set-session-attribute() and
xxforms:get-session-attribute():

http://wiki.orbeon.com/forms/doc/developer-guide/xforms-xpath-functions#TOC-HTTP-request-functions

One question would be when to check for new data in the session. Also,
a given form does not "run" between user interactions, it can only
react to events coming from the client, so you would have do to
updates upon user interaction, or using polling events.

You could also exchange information by dispatching custom events from
the client:

http://wiki.orbeon.com/forms/doc/developer-guide/xforms-javascript-integration#TOC-Dispatching-Events

-Erik

On Fri, Feb 17, 2012 at 5:48 AM, benjamin.dougherty
<[hidden email]> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> We are developing a Torch Portal MVC application running in separate
> deployment mode, we have developed several portlets and so far used public
> render parameters to pass information via portlets. As we add more
> complexity we have an increasing requirement to provide a mechanism to
> communicate instance information via portlets asynchronously or without a
> full page load.
>
> One approach we have considered is the possibility to have a shared instance
> which can be access from any independent form that shares the same session
> state.
>
> Our goal is to have a form write to a shared instance and have other forms
> with binding to that instance be updated as they would for a document
> instance.
>
> Does this exist currently? If not do you have any suggestions as to how we
> can solve this issue?
>
> Thanks,
> Ben.
>
> --
> View this message in context: http://orbeon-forms-ops-users.24843.n4.nabble.com/Shared-session-instance-tp4397281p4397281.html
> Sent from the Orbeon Forms (ops-users) mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
>
>
> --
> You receive this message as a subscriber of the [hidden email] mailing list.
> To unsubscribe: mailto:[hidden email]
> For general help: mailto:[hidden email]?subject=help
> OW2 mailing lists service home page: http://www.ow2.org/wws
>

benjamin.dougherty

Re: Shared session instance

Erik Bruchez wrote

Ben,

This does not exist currently.

Does this mean you are considering implementing it?

I am trying to get dispatch events to work with two portlets but whenever I add a second portlet the dispatchEvents stops working. I noticed both portlets produce two forms on the page both with 'class="xforms-form xforms-layout-nospan"'. Having read http://wiki.orbeon.com/forms/doc/developer-guide/xforms-javascript-integration#TOC-Dispatching-Events it implies you need to set the form class name to something unique, is that correct?

Thanks,
Ben.

Erik Bruchez

Re: Re: Shared session instance

Administrator

>> This does not exist currently.
>
> Does this mean you are considering implementing it?

I didn't mean that ;) See this FAQ entry about fixing/implementing features:

http://wiki.orbeon.com/forms/orbeon-forms-faq/faq-orbeon-forms-support#TOC-When-are-you-going-to-fix-implement

> I am trying to get dispatch events to work with two portlets but whenever I
> add a second portlet the dispatchEvents stops working. I noticed both
> portlets produce two forms on the page both with 'class="xforms-form
> xforms-layout-nospan"'. Having read
> http://wiki.orbeon.com/forms/doc/developer-guide/xforms-javascript-integration#TOC-Dispatching-Events
> it implies you need to set the form class name to something unique, is that
> correct?

We haven't done much testing with two instances of Orbeon portlets on
the same page, so it doesn't surprise me that this is not working
properly. It probably needs investigating. If you want to give it a
shot, see this page about the JavaScript setup:

http://wiki.orbeon.com/forms/doc/contributor-guide/development-environment/javascript-development

-Erik

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benjamin.dougherty

Re: Re: Shared session instance

Ok 'We haven't done much testing with two instances of Orbeon portlets' doesn't sound good we were hoping to use Orbeon as a form processor in our portal solution.

I'm happy to investigate but can you help me understand the dispatchEvent form parameter. When there are multiple forms on a page i.e. in portlets should they have unique form names? If so how is this accomplished?

I'm using Liferay 6.1, Orbeon CE version 3.9 with a Spring Portal MVC application using the orbeon filter to forward the xform content to Orbeon standard processor. It all appears to work ok and multiple forms are processed correctly and are active, dispatchEvents is the first stumbling block we have found.

I noticed in the comparison chart that PE supports Liferay are there parts missing in CE version or is that just FormRunner which we are not using, we were intending to go PE once we are comfortable Orbeon will satisfy our requirements.

Thanks for your time,
Ben.

Erik Bruchez

Re: Re: Re: Shared session instance

Administrator

Ben,

So far have always been using a single instance of Orbeon Forms within
Liferay, so supporting multiple instances on the same page has not
been something we have worked much on.

This said I am glad most things work even with two instances, that
means we went in the right direction! In fact, there is a lot we are
doing to make things work properly, like proper namespacing of ids,
and even rewriting CSS accordingly.

Now if you look at the HTML with e.g. Firebug or similar, do you see
that the two portlets have content with ids that are properly
prefixed?

You can see the implementation of dispatchEvent here:

https://github.com/orbeon/orbeon-forms/blob/master/src/resources-packaged/ops/javascript/xforms.js#L1437

The portlet implementation itself checks whether the PE version is enabled, see:

https://github.com/orbeon/orbeon-forms/blob/master/src/scala/org/orbeon/oxf/portlet/OrbeonPortlet2DelegateBase.scala

If you build from source you can certainly work around this, it's just
that the officiel CE builds we provide will have that test enabled.

-Erik

On Tue, Feb 21, 2012 at 1:57 AM, benjamin.dougherty
<[hidden email]> wrote:

> Ok 'We haven't done much testing with two instances of Orbeon portlets'
> doesn't sound good we were hoping to use Orbeon as a form processor in our
> portal solution.
>
> I'm happy to investigate but can you help me understand the dispatchEvent
> form parameter. When there are multiple forms on a page i.e. in portlets
> should they have unique form names? If so how is this accomplished?
>
> I'm using Liferay 6.1, Orbeon CE version 3.9 with a Spring Portal MVC
> application using the orbeon filter to forward the xform content to Orbeon
> standard processor. It all appears to work ok and multiple forms are
> processed correctly and are active, dispatchEvents is the first stumbling
> block we have found.
>
> I noticed in the comparison chart that PE supports Liferay are there parts
> missing in CE version or is that just FormRunner which we are not using, we
> were intending to go PE once we are comfortable Orbeon will satisfy our
> requirements.
>
> Thanks for your time,
> Ben.
>
>
> --
> View this message in context: http://orbeon-forms-ops-users.24843.n4.nabble.com/Shared-session-instance-tp4397281p4406537.html
> Sent from the Orbeon Forms (ops-users) mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
>
>
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benjamin.dougherty

Re: Re: Re: Shared session instance

Hi Erik,

I managed to get this to work across portlets using the methods you described in the previous post, thanks for your help. I thought I'd share my work see attached files below.

Ben

torchDispatchEventSource.jsp
torchDispatchEventTarget.jsp

Erik Bruchez

Re: Re: Re: Re: Shared session instance

Administrator

Ben,

Excellent, thanks for sharing.

-Erik

On Thu, Mar 22, 2012 at 11:21 AM, benjamin.dougherty
<[hidden email]> wrote:

> Hi Erik,
>
> I managed to get this to work across portlets using the methods you
> described in the previous post, thanks for your help. I thought I'd share my
> work see attached files below.
>
> Ben
>
> http://orbeon-forms-ops-users.24843.n4.nabble.com/file/n4496422/torchDispatchEventSource.jsp
> torchDispatchEventSource.jsp
> http://orbeon-forms-ops-users.24843.n4.nabble.com/file/n4496422/torchDispatchEventTarget.jsp
> torchDispatchEventTarget.jsp
>
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> View this message in context: http://orbeon-forms-ops-users.24843.n4.nabble.com/Shared-session-instance-tp4397281p4496422.html
> Sent from the Orbeon Forms (ops-users) mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
>
>
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