[daisy] Create new site from wiki interface

[Marc Portier]

Parisi, Lou wrote:
> I am working on a proof of concept for a project management CMS using 
> daisy.  When a new project is started, I have a defined set of documents 
> I want to populate into a new site.  I have been able to generate the 
> documents in an existing site but now I want to create a project 
> management site where one of the tasks that can be performed is to 
> create a new site with the populated blank documents using a form to 
> collect the information necessary to create the site.  I have been 
> working on this and am using the repository manager to create a new 
> collection and this works but the collection is not visible in the daisy 
> home site list.  I have also looked at the code for 
> org.outerj.daisy.install.DaisyWikiAddSite.  It seems the main difference 
> between what DaisyWikiAddSite code does and what I am doing is to create 
> the site directory and add the siteconf.xml to the directory.
> 
>  

good observation

> 
> I am still new to Daisy and have a few questions about this.
> 
>  
> 
> Question 1: It seems there is a distinction between a collection and a 
> site.  It appears the difference is that a site has a site directory but 
> a collection does not.  Is this correct?  If so, how is a collection 
> used if it is not a site?
> 

collections live on the repository side and are to be seen as some tag 
on your document grouping them together somewhat (You manage them 
through the collection-manager, you assign them to documents)

You can use these in any way you like: editors are to assign to which 
collection a document belongs and all sorts of queries and stuff can be 
taking that into account. (e.g. ACL does, search does, ...)


a 'site' however is a concept that is not known on the repository (e.g. 
you cannot have a query looking for documents belonging to a site) but 
only exist at the level of the wiki-frontend. (These are indeed created 
by having a directory with siteconf.xml in the dsy-wiki/sites )


There is a subtle link between the two: the siteconf.xml points to a 
default collection for that 'site', the effect of this is:
- new documents created through this site will be automatically in this 
collection
- full-text-search results (and similar lookups in the editor-dialogs) 
will be automatically limited to the site's collection
- ... etc

So again: above describes how the wiki (=just a repository-client) uses 
the repository concept of 'collection' inside its own wiki-concept 'site'


This usage suggests a one on one between site and collection (And 
confirmed by the init-site procedure you've been looking into, since 
that creates both at once.)

Note however that this no must: e.g. in multilingual setups you would 
have one site per language and _all_ of them keeping documents in the 
same collection.


So for you're case you are actually free to choose:

- will you keep all documents on all projects in one repository and let 
all 'sites' use that common collection.  In which case you'll probably 
need to introduce some other field to link it to the correct projects. 
By making that field multivalue or not you can control of documents can 
be linked to more then one project or not.

- or will you indeed create separate collections and use that to group 
documents of certain projects together (note: here you have no choice: 
collections _are_ multi-value tags on documents, so you'll always be 
able to store on document in multiple collections)

- you might even consider not to make multiple sites... but structure 
the info all on one 'site' and play around with subnavigations and stuff

- ....

pretty timtowdi as you seen, one of the approaches is likely to have 
natural fit with your case...

>  
> 
> Question 2: Is it possible to create a full-fledged site using 
> javascript through the wiki front-end or does this have to be done by an 
> external script calling a java class?  If it can’t be done through 
> javascript through daisy, is it possible to accomplish the same thing by 
> creating a Servlet that the form called to write to the filesystem or 
> possibly an applet embedded in a document?
> 

the 'site' being a daisy-wiki feature I would go for hosting the code 
for creating that directory as a daisy-wiki extension... (that will have 
access to ths dsy-wiki directory where the action is to happen)


- applets run on the client: unlikely you can reach dsy-wiki directory there
- daisy.js scripts pretty much have the same issue (although you could 
execute those on the server as well, they keep being 'client' apps)

- servlets are the best candidates from your list, but you might find 
that writing a cocoon-based flowscript extension (javascript again) for 
this is a far easier approach

from the same script you'll be able to create the collection and all 
necessary documents

you'ld want to read up on this:
http://cocoondev.org/daisydocs-2_1/374-cd/60-cd.html
(and sections below)


good luck, and please report back
(my guess is this is useful for more people that might be willing to 
chime in, or at least just snatch your results :-))


regards,
-marc=