Getting Started with CMIS

Getting Started with CMIS
January 2012

Jeff Potts
Chief Community Officer
Apache Chemistry cmislib lead

Agenda
• What is CMIS?
– Brief description
– Quick overview of the domain model
• First steps using Apache Chemistry
– Demos using cmislib (Python) and OpenCMIS
(Java)
– Demo using OpenCMIS Workbench & the Groovy
Console
• Tips & Tricks for New CMIS Developers
• Where to learn more

What is CMIS?
• Vendor independent API for working with
content repositories
• Specification managed by OASIS
– Domain model
– Protocol bindings
• Web Services Binding
• ATOM Pub Binding
• Browser (JSON) Binding (Coming in 1.1)
– CMIS Query Language

The Beauty of CMIS
Presentation
Tier

REST SOAP

?
Content
Services Tier

Enterprise
Apps Tier ?

Meet CMIS
Consumer
Client

read write

Services
Domain Model
Provider

Content
Vendor Management
Mapping Interoperability
Services
Content
Repository CMIS lets you
read, search, write, update, delete, version, c
ontrol, … content and metadata!

Developed by 30+ ECM Vendors
Implementations Already Available…

Providers
Consumers

Use Cases
Content
Client Client
Repository

Content Content Content
Content
Repository Repository Repository
Content
Repository
Repository

• Collaborative Content Creation • Workflow & BPM
• Portals • Archival
• Client Application Integration • Virtual Documents
• Mashup • DAM / WCM

Types
Document Folder
• Content • Container
• Renditions • Hierarchy
• Version History • Filing

Described by
Type Definitions

Relationship Policy
• Source Object • Target Object
• Target Object

Type Definitions
Object Property
• Type Id • Property Id
• Parent * • Display Name
• Display Name • Type
•Queryable • Required
• Controllable • Default Value
•…

Document Folder Relationship Policy
•Versionable • Source Types
• Allow Content • Target Types

Custom Type

• Open Source implementations of CMIS
• Apache Chemistry is the umbrella project
for all CMIS related projects within the
ASF
– OpenCMIS (Java, client and server)
– cmislib (Python, client)
– phpclient (PHP, client)
– DotCMIS (.NET, client)

• Apache Chemistry started as an incubator
project in May 2009
– Graduated to a top level project in February
2011.
• Backed by
Adobe, Alfresco, Nuxeo, OpenText, and
SAP
• OpenCMIS is a de-facto reference for
CMIS and is also used by the CMIS TC to
test new CMIS 1.1 features

FIRST STEPS WITH CMIS

Real-world coding examples

Notes on my setup
• Alfresco 4.0.c Community
• SomeCo content model (See ecmarchitect.com)
• Mac OS X, Tomcat, MySQL, Eclipse
• Java
– OpenCMIS 0.6*
– Alfresco OpenCMIS extension 0.2*
– JDK 1.6.0_29
• Python
– cmislib 0.5
– Python 2.6/2.7

* Distributed with Alfresco 4 SDK

DEMO
Installing and Using cmislib
Use easy_install to install cmislib. Docs available here.

:10

DEMO
Using OpenCMIS to create, query, relate, & delete
The code comes from the ecmarchitect.com custom content types
tutorial, available here. Apache Chemistry OpenCMIS lives here.

:10

DEMO

Using the Groovy Console in the OpenCMIS Workbench

:05

TIPS & TRICKS

A few tidbits for the developer new to CMIS

Prefix cannot be null or empty
• You may see this error when using the
Alfresco OpenCMIS extension
• It is due to a dependency problem
• If you are using Maven, see this issue.
• If you are setting an explicit
classpath, refer to the CMIS classpath set
in the Ant build file in the content types
tutorial

Using Alfresco CMIS extension with
OpenCMIS Workbench
• You must do this if you want to set
properties defined in an aspect
• Copy alfresco-opencmis-extension-0.2.jar
to workbench/lib
• Set the following on “Expert” tab:
org.apache.chemistry.opencmis.objectfactory.classname=o
rg.alfresco.cmis.client.impl.AlfrescoObjectFactoryImpl

• Click “Load Repositories” before leaving
the expert tab

In Alfresco 4 the CMIS URLs have
changed
• In Alfresco 4, OpenCMIS is now the CMIS
implementation
– Use http://localhost:8080/alfresco/cmisatom
instead of http://localhost:8080/alfresco/s/cmis
– Consider the CMIS web scripts to be
deprecated
– You may see different results b/w the two
URLs

CMIS in server-side JavaScript*
varcmisConnection = cmis.getConnection();
varcmisSession = cmisConnection.getSession();
folder = cmisSession.getRootFolder();
print("Children of: " + folder.name + "(" +
folder.id + ")");

variter = folder.getChildren().iterator();
while (iter.hasNext()) {
print(iter.next().name);
}

*Broken in 4.0.c Community

Experimental JSON binding in
Alfresco 4
• Alfresco 4 includes an experimental
implementation of the new browser
binding
• http://localhost:8080/alfresco/cmisbrowser
http://localhost:8080/alfresco/cmisbrowser
http://localhost:8080/alfresco/cmisbrowser/{repo id}/root
http://localhost:8080/alfresco/cmisbrowser/{repo
id}/root?includeAllowableActions=true&skipCount=0&maxItems
id}/root/cmis-demo
id}/root/cmisdemo?selector=children
id}/root/cmisdemo?selector=object

Working with permissions
• ACLs are lists of ACEs
• In Alfresco, group identifiers start with
”GROUP_”
• You cannot break inheritance through
CMIS, but you can determine whether an
ACE is inherited or “direct”

CMIS Resources
• cmis.alfresco.com includes a public CMIS server
and links to CMIS resources
• Read the CMIS specification
• Apache Chemistry site has clients, lightweight
server, documentation
• Alfresco Extension for OpenCMIS allows you to
work with aspect-defined properties
• “Getting Started with CMIS” tutorial shows how to
use cURL to hit ATOM Pub binding directly
• Slideshare has some CMIS related presentations
from DevConhere and here

QUESTIONS
jeff.potts@alfresco.com
@jeffpotts01 (Twitter & all chat services)
http://ecmarchitect.com

Getting Started with CMIS

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