BP207 - Easy as pie creating widgets for ibm connections

BP207 Easy As Pie - Creating
Widgets for IBM Connections

Mikkel Flindt Heisterberg
Senior Solution Architect | IntraVision

© 2012 IBM Corporation

Legal disclaimer
© IBM Corporation 2012. All Rights Reserved.
The information contained in this publication is provided for informational purposes only. While efforts were made
to verify the completeness and accuracy of the information contained in this publication, it is provided AS IS
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References in this presentation to IBM products, programs, or services do not imply that they will be available in all
countries in which IBM operates. Product release dates and/or capabilities referenced in this presentation may
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Notes, Domino, Quickr, Sametime, WebSphere, UC2, PartnerWorld and Lotusphere are trademarks of
International Business Machines Corporation in the United States, other countries, or both. Unyte is a trademark
of WebDialogs, Inc., in the United States, other countries, or both.

2 | © 2012 IBM Corporation

About me
 With IntraVision (makers of the OnTime®
suite of calendar and meeting
management products – showcase booth
515), Premier Business Partner from
Denmark
 Been working with IBM Lotus®
technologies since he was a young boy
 Recently named an IBM Champion for
IBM Collaboration Solutions (ICS)
 An all together nice guy!

 http://twitter.com/lekkim
 http://lekkimworld.com

Agenda
 A bit on IBM Connections architecture and the
infrastructure for widgets i.e. configuration files etc.
 Introduction to iWidgets – configure, develop and deploy
 Resources and summary
 Q&A


IBM Connections architecture


Widgets in IBM Connections
 Most functionality in IBM Connections is actually widgets
 You may add widgets in Profiles, Communities and Homepage
 Widgets are made up of two parts
─ Widget configuration on the IBM Connections server
─ The actual widget written to the iWidget specification (JavaScript / XML / HTML / CSS)


Widgets in IBM Connections
 You may add widgets in Profiles, Communities and Homepage
 Most functionality in these features is actually widgets
 Widgets are made up of two parts
─ Widget configuration on the IBM Connections server
─ The actual widget written to the iWidget specification (JavaScript / XML / CSS)


Widget modes
 There are a number of modes defined (view, edit, fullpage, search) but not all
modes are supported in all features (fullpage and search only in Communities)
 Widgets may contribute multiple modes
 Administrator may choose to use some and not all modes contributed

Added by the community Added by administrator
owner

View mode

Widget modes

Fullpage mode

Widget modes

Search mode

Widget configuration in widgets-config.xml

(unless using
extreme care)


Widget attributes makes the widget configurable
 It doesn't make sense to hard code or at least not supply sensible defaults and
widget attributes can be used for configuration
 String key/value pairs may be supplied – interpretation of the value is up to the
widget though
 Some values cannot be specified in widgets-config.xml as they may change
based on IBM Connections configuration (such as context root i.e. “/dogear” /
“/bookmarks”) or the ID of the active profile / community
 Special values are enclosed in curly braces – i.e.
─ {resourceId} profileKey of current Profiles user or communityUnid if in Communities
─ {contextRoot} Context root of the current feature (i.e. “/profiles”)


Widget attributes makes the widget configurable (2)


Say hello to iWidgets
 In IBM Connections 3 the widgets are iWidgets which means that they are
written to the iWidget specification
 Widgets are described by a widget descriptor (referenced in widgets-config.xml)
and optionally JavaScript to provide dynamic behavior and, also optionally, CSS
to style the contents
 The widget descriptor describes supported modes, startup mode, “iScope class”
(more in a bit) and, optionally, which resources to load
 Static widget content for each mode may also be supplied


Widget descriptor – more in depth


iScope class

● Access to dojo version 1.4.1 (highly customized for IBM Connections)
● You do not have to use dojo to declare the class... 21 | © 2012 IBM Corporation

iContext
 An iContext instance is automatically set into the iScope class
 The iContext provides access to the widget markup (e.g. root element), I/O
related functions (i.e. URL rewriting), widget attributes etc.
 The iContext is easily accessed from the iScope class using this.iContext
 Important functions include:
─ iContext.getRootElement() : DOM Element
─ iContext.getElementById(id:string) : DOM Element
─ iContext.getiWidgetAttributes() : ItemSet
─ iContext.getUserProfile() : ItemSet
─ iContext.io.rewriteURI(uri:string) : string
─ iContext.iEvents.fireEvent(name:string, type:string, payload:object)

 You retrieve information from an ItemSet using getItemValue(name:string)


Using iContext


Using iEvents


Keeping context
 JavaScript is single threaded - all requests for web resources are done after the
current method completes
 The callback is done with another context i.e. “this” will refer to something else
than your iScope class
 Solution is to
─ use closures i.e. save a reference to “this” before the call
─ use dojo.hitch and have dojo apply the correct context


Keeping context
 Solution is to


What's your origin?
 In browsers we have what's called the
“Same Origin Policy”
 JavaScript running the the browser may
only do XHR's against the same server
it was loaded from
 Same server means
─ Same hostname / IP
─ Same port number
 To work around this we use an AJAX
proxy
 IBM Connections supplies us with a
proxy which is easy to use from your
widget code


Using the AJAX proxy

If running in Profiles the proxy will be http://<host>/profiles/ajaxProxy
Above request will be http://<host>/profiles/ajaxProxy/http/www.google.com/search?q=Lotusphere

IBM Connections AJAX proxy is used for all requests

 Easy to see if using Firebug to trace
 AJAX proxy used for all requests even though widget descriptor and required
JavaScript files are fully qualified and from same hostname / port combination


Proxy security
 For security access through the proxy is disallowed by default
 You have to allow access on a per hostname and method
type (GET, POST, DELETE etc.) basis (or open for all
hostnames / methods although not recommended)
 Do remember to allow access for LtpaToken cookies if
authentication should be propagated (unless using
extreme care)
 Proxy configuration done in proxy-config.tpl on
the IBM Connections server


Using Connections provide a very comprehensive REST API based on the
 IBM the IBM Connections REST API
AtomPub standard
 Each feature has full documentation on how to access data using the API in the
InfoCenter / wiki – unfortunately examples are hard to come by
 Since these requests probably go to the IBM Connections server they may not
need to be proxied (unless features are on separate servers)
─ Remember to always use widget attributes (e.g. {profilesSvcRef}) to get URL to the Profiles
feature unless you are willing to guess / hardcode
 Using the lconn.core.xpath and lconn.core.xslt classes can help you
work with the XML based results
─ Loaded by default by the IBM Connections pages
─ Probably not supported neither officially or unofficially... :-)
 Most important functions:
─ lconn.core.xpath.selectNodes(xpath:string, xmldoc:XMLDocument,
ns:array) : Nodelist
─ lconn.core.xslt.loadXml(url:string) : XMLDocument


IBM Connections REST API example


Widget title, i18n and resources
 Unfortunately setting the title of your widget isn't as easy as
one could have hoped :-(
 Setting the title can be done in one of two ways (well three
actually):
1) Using general IBM Connections strings properties file – this one is easy
and only require creating / changing one file
2) Using custom properties file – this one is clean as you don't depend on
others files but it does also require change to LotusConnections-
config.xml

● Title is set as the value for a property where the key is the
widget id from widgets-config.xml
● String resources – e.g. translation – can be done using same
approach

OnTime=Calendar by OnTime

Widget title, i18n and resources example


Reading i18n strings from your bundle


Caveats
 Editing configuration files by hand is prone to error
─ IBM would tell you always use checkin/checkout via wsadmin
as it does a schema check :-)
 Widgets are running in a shared environment
─ Make sure your CSS classes do not clash
─ Make sure ID's are unique by prefixing something unique to
them as there may be multiple instances of the same widget
on the page (it follows from this that you cannot use ID's for
CSS selectors)
 Because you have access to the entire page doesn't
mean that you should...
 Never, never, never, never ever add something like
the following to your stylesheet – you may need it but
the page as a whole will start to look funny...
* {font-size: 7pt; color: red; overflow: hidden}
 Start small...

Things I would have hoped someone had told me...
 Dojo is nasty to troubleshoot due to async loading – all errors seem to come
from dojo.js which is almost never the culprit
 Logging is really your friend but do add something that indicates which piece of
code is logging
─ console.log, console.trace, console.debug, console.info, console.warn, console.error
 How to show a lightbox


 Dojo is nasty to troubleshoot due to async loading – all errors seem to come
from dojo.js which is almost never the culprit
 Logging is really your friend but do add something that indicates which piece of
code is logging
─ console.log, console.trace, console.debug, console.info, console.warn, console.error
 How to show a lightbox


 Network latency kills web application performance – cache as such as possible
and combine multiple files into one minified version
 Repeat after me: “Latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency,
latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency,
latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency, latency.....

Summary
 Most functionality in IBM Connections is actually widgets and you can add your
own
 Bringing your applications into IBM Connections and thus providing in-context
access is very valuable
 Widgets are quite easy to develop using JavaScript and CSS although you must
know about asynchronous JavaScript
 Dojo makes it easy to keep context and it's already loaded
 iWidgets, iScope, iContext, iEvents...
 Use asynchronous calls to keep UI snappy and use dojo.hitch to keep context
 Start small and build from there

 Happy coding!!


Related sessions
 BP121: Performance Programming
 AD201: Integrate and Customize IBM Connections 3.0.1
 AD203: Developing Custom Client Applications using the IBM Connections APIs
 AD204: Mastering the Art of Social Application Development


The shameless plug...

Social Application Throwdown
Where: Dolphin, Northern
Hemisphere A-C
Time: 5.30pm – 6.30pm

Featuring yours truly (and 5 other
business partners...) 43 | © 2012 IBM Corporation

Resources
 iWidget specification: http://www-10.lotus.com/ldd/mashupswiki.nsf/dx/iwidget-
spec-v1.0.pdf/$file/iwidget-spec-v1.0.pdf
 IBM Connections iWidget Development Guide: www-
10.lotus.com/ldd/lcwiki.nsf/dx/development-guide
 iWidget support in Homepage: http://www-
10.lotus.com/ldd/lcwiki.nsf/dx/07072009105437%D8%B5WEBKH7.htm
 iWidget support in profiles and Communities: http://www-
10.lotus.com/ldd/lcwiki.nsf/dx/10082009050455WEBCNM.htm
 Common iWidget support in Connections: http://www-
10.lotus.com/ldd/lcwiki.nsf/dx/common-iwidget-support-in-the-lotus-
connections-features

 In all modesty my blog – http://lekkimworld.com


Q&A
 But?, How?, Doesn't that mean...
 Give it to me! (or come talk to me
after the session or find me in the
hallways...)

 Twitter: @lekkim
Email: mh@intravision.dk
Blog: http://lekkimworld.com

 Slides will be at
http://lekkimworld.com/lotusphere2012

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