So here's the situation. I want to add 'old' news from our previous website in to an asset publisher portlet on our new Liferay 6.1 site. The problem is that I want them to show up as if I had added them in the past.
So, I figure, how hard can it be to modify the createDate? I've since been able to directly access the MySQL database and perform updates on the article object's createDate field. However, it doesn't seem to propagate to my Liferay deployment, regardless of clearing caches, reindexing search indices, and restarting Liferay. The web content still maintains it's 'original' createDate even though the database shows it as the value I have changed it to.
Here's the query I used:
mysql> UPDATE JournalArticle SET createDate='2012-03-08 15:17:12' WHERE ArticleID = 16332;
I have since learned that it is a no-no to directly manipulate the database, as the dynamics of database/Liferay isn't as straight forward as Liferay performing lookups. So it looks like I might need to use the Liferay API, namely, setCreateDate as seen here.
But I have absolutely no idea where and how to leverage the API. Do I need to create a dummy portlet with the sole purpose of using this API call? Or can I create a .java file somewhere on the server running my Liferay deployment and run it to leverage this method?
I only have like 15 articles I need to do this to. I can find them by referencing the ArticleID and GroupID.
Any help would be greatly appreciated. I've grepped the Liferay deployment and found setCreateDate being used heavily within .java files inside the knowledge-base-portlet, but I can't tell how else to directly use them without creating a portlet.
On the other hand, if anybody knows how to get my database to propagate it's changes to the Liferay deployment, even though I know it's a dirty hack, that would probably be the easiest.
Thanks; I really appreciate it.
Using of Liferay API is of course the clear and better way, but for only 15 articles I would try to change it directly through the database.
I checked the database and it seems that Liferay stores the data in these tables: JOURNALARTICLE and ASSETENTRY.
Try to change the created date in both these tables.
Then reload the cache: Control Panel -> Server Administration --> Clear Database Cache.
You can write hook for application startup event. This way whenever liferay is first started it will change the create date as you desire. Later if you want to remove the hook it can be done easily. See here on how to create a hook and deploy it.
http://www.liferay.com/community/wiki/-/wiki/Main/Portal+Hook+Plugins
Also, changing in database itself is not at all recommended even for 1 value/article. Always use Liferay provided service api to modify.
Related
Using free, self-managed GitLab
Due to group-level custom project templates available only to paid tiers (even there there are restrictions) I am looking into an alternative solution using a simple project, where
in the code repository each branch provides a template
in the wiki each code repository branch has an entry documenting what the template does
I know that the wiki and the code are actually two separate repositories.
In its nature a template is a construct that offers a pre-made setup for working on a reoccurring task. A group template adds the additional restriction that the reoccurring task applies to more then one individual.
In order to limit tomfoolery and people pushing whatever they want thinking it's worth becoming a group-level template (even though they made something real quick to tackle a problem that has been long forgotten and even they themselves will not work on it ever again) I would like to impose access restrictions to all members. Beside the maintainer/owner all other members are assigned a developer role. All branches are protected so a change of an existing branch or the creation of a new one can only be done through a merge request leading to an assessment whether the committed changes to the repository are actually worthy of becoming a template for the whole group.
Many members of my group have the bad habit of choosing poor names for functionality they have developed (e.g. a script called jennifers_help_script_23.py) and not documenting what was actually implemented. And yes, we are not a software development company but a research institute. :D So in order to improve the documentation and the ability to actually reuse some of the quite useful things that people have developed I would like to make it mandatory for people to provide documentation if they want their stuff to be added to the project.
So the question here is can a user submit a code merge request that also acts as a merge request for a change in the wiki (e.g. user has created a new template, which requires also a new wiki page documenting that template) or the two have to be handled separately given the nature of a GitLab project (wiki separate from code)?
I was thinking maybe each branch (representing a template) will contain a markdown file that will be inserted as a wiki automatically after the merge request has been approved. However I don't know how to automate this. I am currently looking into uploading a file to the wiki using the GitLab API, hoping a can somehow add a trigger in GitLab to execute the "command" upon a successful merge. Needless to say I am quite new to all of this.
I have a split database and I have duplicated front-end file to make multiple copies for different users. Every-time a change is made on one front-end form, I want the other forms in other front-ends to always drop changes. How can I trap this write conflict to always drop changes maybe through VBA if possible?
Not quite sure what you mean by "drop changes" - the frontend should never be redesigned during normal use.
You must distribute a new copy of the frontend to the users.
A smooth and proven method using a shortcut and a script is described in my article:
Deploy and update a Microsoft Access application with one click
(If you don't have an account, browse for the link: Read the full article)
Edit:
If it is the data that is updated by several users, and you update via VBA, you may study another of my articles:
Handle concurrent update conflicts in Access silently
Though simple to use, the code is a bit too much to post here. It is also on GitHub:
VBA.ConcurrencyUpdates
I have a couple of Composite C1 CMS websites.
To edit them currently I use the web based CMS on the live site.
However - I would like to update the (code & content) in Visual Studio locally - then sync to the web. However, if my local copy is older than that online (e.g. a non techy client has edited something on the live site) and I Web Deploy - it will go over the top of the new file on the server.
I need a solution that works out the newest change? I can't find anything in Google or the C1 docs.
How can I sync - preferably using Web Deploy. Do I need some kind of version control?
Is there a best practice for this - editing the live site through the web interface seems a bit dicey & is slow.
The general answer to this type of scenario seems to be to use the Package Creator. With that you can develop locally, add the files you've changed to a package, and install that package on a live site. This solution does not at all cover all the parts of you question though, and has certain limitations:
You cannot selectively add content to a package. It's all pages or no pages.
Adding datatypes is easy, but updating them later requires you to delete the datatype (and data), and recreate the datatype.
In my experience packages works well for incremental site updates, if you limit the packages content to be front end stuff, like css, images and such.
You say you need a solution that works out the newest changes - I believe the only solution to this is yourself, with the aid of some tooling. I don't think there's a silver bullet solution here.
Should you use a version control system? Yes! By all means. Even if you are not sharing your code with anyone, a VCS is a great way to get to know Composite C1 from a file system perspective, as you can carefully track what files are changed on disk, as you develop. This knowledge is crucial when you want to continuously add features the a website that is already alive and kicking - you need to know what to deploy, and what not to touch.
Make sure you read the docs on how Composite fits in VCS: http://docs.composite.net/Configuration/C1-and-Version-Control
I assume that your sites are using the XML data storage (if you where using SQL Data Store, your content would not be overridden upon sync).
This means that your entire web application lives in one folder on disk on the web server, which can be an advantage here.
I'll try to outline a solution that could work for you, although I must stress that I've never tried this - I'm making it up as I type.
Let's say you're using git, download the site in it's entirety from the production web server, and commit the whole damned thing* to your master branch.
Then you create a new feature branch from that commit, and start making the changes you want to deploy later, and carefully commit your work as you go along, making sure you only commit the changes that are needed for your feature to work, to the feature branch.
Now, you are ready to deploy, and you switch back the master branch, and again download the entire site and commit it to master.
You then merge your feature branch into the master branch, and have git do all the hard work of stitching you changes in with the changes from the live site. There are bound to be merge conflicts, and that is where you will have to jump in, and decide for yourself what content needs to go live.
After this is done and tested, you can web deploy the site up to the production environment.
Changes to the live site might have occurred while you where merging, so consider closing the site, or parts of it, during this process.
If you are using SQL Data Store i suggest paying for a tool like Red Gate's SQL Compare and SQL Data Compare or SQL Delta, to compare your dev database to the production database, and hand pick SQL scripts that can be applied to the production database along with your feature deployment.
'* Do consider using a .gitignore file to avoid committing certain files - refer to the docs for mere info.
I suppose you should use the Package Creator
Also have a look here: http://docs.composite.net/Configuration/C1-and-Version-Control
I'm trying to configure a trac server we are using in my team, in order to avoid an undesired behaviour. We are mainly developing free and open-source software in the team, but we sometimes need to be able to build our early prototypes as completely private.
Because of our first constraint, we want our timeline to be visible for anonymous users. But because of the seconde constraints, we want some commits to be completely hidden from the external world, i.e. we don't want anybody else than us to be able to read the message and content of some commits in the timeline.
Unfortunately, I've been unable to configure Trac the proper way to reach this behaviour untli now. I wan't find a configuration that would let me manage the Timeline content with enough accuracy.
Consequently, I would like to know if such a configuration is possible with trac.
For information, I'm using Trac 0.12.2. The installed plugins are :
Trac 0.12.2
TracAccountManager 0.2.1dev-r7731
TracNav 4.1
The only permission I can see that is related to Timeline is TIMELINE_VIEW.
EDIT :
I have forgot to mention something. We don't want to loose the private commits. And we want them to display for registered users. Consequently, it's not a solution for us to remove them from the database.
EDIT 2 :
Ideally, we would like the commits' message to be displayed according to the right to read the content of our Subversion repository. The idea is that, if a commit is made on a part someone can't access, this person is not supposed to be able to read the message of the commit either.
EDIT 3 :
If we have a look in the configuration file of trac, we already can find :
permission_policies = AuthzSourcePolicy, DefaultPermissionPolicy, LegacyAttachmentPolicy
and the authz_file variable is properly set too. Moreover, svn access to the private folders of the svn repositories can't be accessed by anonymous users.
You should set up authz checking for both your Subversion repository and your Trac installation. You can use the same permission file for both. For Subversion, see Path-based authorization in the SVN book. For Trac, enable and configure the trac.versioncontrol.svn_authz.AuthzSourcePolicy component.
This will allow you to have a very fine-grained control over who can access which part of the repository. Note that the implementation of AuthzSourcePolicy in Trac 0.12.2 has a few bugs that will be fixed in 0.12.3.
There are two ways of going about this :
1) You can directly edit the plugins that are running in trac, and add a module that helps you to filter these out at the code level (i.e. you can edit the behavior of the script to , say, only include commits which exclude certain key words). The timeline script is here (trac 2.4) : /usr/local/lib/python2.4/site-packages/trac/Timeline.py (here is an online diff snapshot of the source code : http://trac.edgewall.org/attachment/ticket/890/Timeline.py.diff)
2) You can remove the commits entirely - trac commits are derived from the sqlLite database (the schema is here http://trac.edgewall.org/wiki/TracDev/DatabaseSchema).
Of course, there also might be some fancy tools out there that provide a nice interface for editing the way the timeline looks.
Finally - temporarily, you can remove the timeline/roadmap entirely from the trac.ini file : http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/trac/users/28079
I confess that I've virtually no experience with the repository part of Trac, even less with using a repository with a variety of permissions across it's contents.
On the subject: Configuration is certainly not enough, see rblanks answer. While I've never seen the code for that functionality, I was wrong to suggest it doesn't exist. Because it is a central place and developed/supported in Trac core this is definitely the way to go.
I have been asked by a client to make amends to their site using the custom CS system that was built for them (by somebody else). Making the changes is not a problem but they want the changed to be viewed on a test server before going live and the only way I can think of doing that is by pulling the entire site down, duplicating and reconnecting databases and uploading it to a test server. Then I would have to make all the changes twice which isn't really ideal.
Does anyone know of a way to do this that isn't such a ball ache? There's hundreds of files and data tables as you would expect with a custom CMS and for changes that would only take a few hours to do duplicating the entire site seems a tad unnecessary.
Cheers,
Sam
Does the CMS have "preview mode"?
Typically, in a CMS you make your changes using the content editing interface, save the changes, allow authorized users to view the changes in preview mode, and then change the status to "approved"; this then sends the changes live.
Different products call this by a different name, and have different ways of doing it - but it's worth rooting around in the custom CMS to see if there's something similar.