Learn how to leverage Alfresco’s action services to perform repeatable operations on our content. Understand Alfresco’s built-in actions and discover how you can encapsulate your business logic in your own custom actions should you need to. We then examine the various forms of callbacks and hook-points available to the developer in the form of behaviors and give some examples of how these can be used to enforce custom business logic and model consistency

1. Actions and Behaviors!
Roy Wetherall – Founding Engineer - @rwetherall!

2. Agenda!
1. Breaking it Down!
2. Behaviours!
3. Actions!
4. Demo!
5. Questions!

3. Breaking It Down!

4. Why Actions and Behaviours?!
Extend beyond content models.
Make extensions smarter.
Encapsulate features.
React to changes.

5. Sum of the Parts ...!
Content Model
+
Behaviours
+
Actions
=
Smart Repository Extension

6. Breaking it down ...!
Content Model – data structure and constraints
Behaviours – interactions, consequences and
restrictions
Actions – execution

7. Behaviours
!

8. Architecture!

9. Binding Behaviours!

10. Different Types Of Bindings!
Service – called every time
Class – most common, bound to type or
aspect
Association – bound to association, useful
for adding smarts to custom hierarchies
Properties – bound to property, too granular

11. Code Example – Java Behaviour!
Bind class behaviour.
Java implementation.
Execute behaviour when aspect is added.
e.g. Initialise property with calculated value.
@see IdentifiableAspectPartOne.java

12. Notification Frequencies!
Every Time
First Event
Transaction Commit

13. JavaScript Behaviours!
More accessible for developers.
Greater flexibility.
Common Script API.
Spring configurable.
No Java code!

14. Code Example – JavaScript !
Add identifiable aspect to content.
JavaScript implementation.
Special ‘behaviour’ object available.
Spring configured.
@see onCreateChildAssociation_cmContent_cmContains.js

15. Common uses for behaviours ... !!
Built in “rules”.
Service call-back extension points.
Calculated properties.
Complex constraints.
Auto-casting.
A model with behaviour is a “Smart Model”.

16. Code Example – Copy Service Callback!
Define custom behaviour copy.
Ensures id is not duplicated.
New id defined on copy.
Technique can be used to prevent aspects
being copied all.
See @IdentifiableAspectPartTwo.java

17. Code Example – Model Restrictions !
Behaviours can throw exceptions.
Runtime exceptions rollback transactions.
Can be used to enforce model constraints
(e.g. read only properties).
See @IdentifiableAspectPartThree.java

18. Behaviour Filter Bean!
Enable and disable behaviours from other
services.
By type and/or node.
Per transaction.
Enable/disable all.
See @BehaviourFilter.java

19. Actions
!

20. What is an Action?!
Unit of work.
Executed in the repository.
Passed parameters, return value.
Sync or async execution.
Puts the ‘do’ in API.
Reusable.
Alfresco implementation of the
GoF “Command” pattern

21. Architecture!

22. Anatomy of an Action!

23. Code Example - Executing An Action!
Notify author when Identifiable node is
deleted.
Execute custom action from behaviour.
Use action service.
@see IdentifiableAspect.java

24. Custom Actions!
Extend built-in actions.
Implemented in Java or JavaScript.
Available in Share UI.
Executable as rules.
Custom conditions implemented in the
same way.
Convenient way to execute
asynchronous work.

25. Code Example – Custom Action !
Custom Java action.
Notifies author via email.
Configured using Spring.
Private action, does not appear in UI.
See @DeleteNotificationActionExecuter.java

26. Putting It All Together
(or a quick demo in Share 4.0)!

27. Questions?!