Webnodes Developers Quick Guide

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1 Webnodes Webnodes Developers Quick Guide Want to get started right away? Ole Gulbrandsen 1/1/2010

2 Webnodes Developers Quick Guide Want to get started right away? This guide is for C# developers and will help you get started with the Webnodes Adaptive Framework (WAF). After reading this short guide you should have a basic knowledge of the key features in WAF and be able to start building basic websites and web applications. Definitions and meanings of words... 3 Installation... 3 Editing content... 4 Things to try out... 5 The WAF data model... 8 Examples of data query... 9 Why are the data modelling capabilities so important? Some words about processes outside the context page view execution Making your own templates Creating your own content class Standard modules Welcome Content SMS and MMS File library Blog Forum Templates Semantics User Explorer System Wastebin Other key functionality Functionality in development and soon to be released: Some examples of what is possible with WAF P a g e

Definitions and meanings of words When using the term WAF in this document, it is the short expression for Webnodes Adaptive Framework Installation 1.

webnodes.com/download 3. Click the Create button to install a new site. 4. Choose the Visual Studio project installation: 5.

3 Definitions and meanings of words When using the term WAF in this document, it is the short expression for Webnodes Adaptive Framework Installation 1. Make sure you got: A Windows PC with.net 3.51 or later Visual Studio 2008/2010 or Visual Studio Express MS SQL Server, MS SQL Server Express or MySQL 2. Launch the setup from 3. Click the Create button to install a new site. 4. Choose the Visual Studio project installation: 5. Follow the setup wizard in your browser and select the The WAF framework site which is an empty WAF installation. If the setup for some reason fail or you abort it halfway, you must delete all files in the website folder and run WAF.Setup.exe again. 3 P a g e

Editing content Type edit after the root URL of the website. This will take you to the WAF interface. Use the master login you specified during the setup. WAF works best with IE or Firefox.

4 Editing content Type edit after the root URL of the website. This will take you to the WAF interface. Use the master login you specified during the setup. WAF works best with IE or Firefox. Maximize the browser window. Open the preview by clicking on the Preview button on the top right corner. Select one of the articles in the menu and click Edit at the top. You can now make changes to the text, Save and click Refresh above the preview frame and to watch the change live. This will open the page in WAF and your interface should look similar to this 4 P a g e

Things to try out Move articles in the tree view by simple drag drop operations with the mouse.

Upload images by clicking on the Upload button in the Files field below the blue editor.

Once the images are uploaded you can insert them into the editor using the image icon on the editor toolbar, or simply drag and drop them into the editor.

5 Things to try out Move articles in the tree view by simple drag drop operations with the mouse. Copy articles in the tree view by drag drop operations while you hold the SHIFT key in. Search for articles in the search box to the top right. Upload images by clicking on the Upload button in the Files field below the blue editor. Select a range of images from your hard drive and watch WAF upload multiple images in one go. Once the images are uploaded you can insert them into the editor using the image icon on the editor toolbar, or simply drag and drop them into the editor. Try resizing it and notice how WAF re-samples a new version for each size automatically. Once an image is inserted in the HTML field you can edit it by right clicking on the image. This should give you access to the Image Editor: You can use the mouse wheel to zoom in and out of the image. Dragging outside the image moves the image. Dragging inside creates a new cut out. 5 P a g e

You can copy and paste inside the editor to work on multiple versions of the same image: There are also

Example: Notice how all the sailboats are present in the right image.

The crop mode is selected in the image editor: Upload a video file to the same field as the images.

6 You can copy and paste inside the editor to work on multiple versions of the same image: There are also advanced image manipulations features like image seam carving for better automatic cropping of images. Example: Notice how all the sailboats are present in the right image. WAF automatically removes low contrast areas of the image while keeping the boats intact. The crop mode is selected in the image editor: Upload a video file to the same field as the images. Insert it in the editor using the media icon on the editor toolbar. WAF will automatically convert the video to the size and quality you want. 6 P a g e

7 Once the player is inserted you can resize and resample the video by simply resizing it like an image: Another thing you can try is the Content Link graph. This is a visualization of all links and relations to the document: 7 P a g e

8 The WAF data model The semantic data modelling capabilities in WAF is unique and differentiate WAF from other CMS system. It is the semantic data modelling capabilities that really make WAF a true web application framework you can use for almost any web application, and not just web publishing. In essence WAF is a fully fledged ORM system with an integrated UI and functionality related to web. For those of you who are not familiar with ORM systems. ORM is short for Object-relational mapping and is a technology for converting data and data models found in rational databases with object oriented language systems. Typically you define your data model in a XML document and the system generates the database fields and code files for you. In WAF there is a XML file that defines the semantic data model, but there is also a built in content type editor that is much easier to work with: The WAF ORM system has built in support for advanced functionality like: Object inheritance, Many to Many relations, hierarchical relations, revision and role control on all content changes, multiple language versions of the same object, super fast query caches, cross field free text searches, etc. Everything you see in WAF is based on the WAF ORM system. That means users, documents, templates etc. are all part of the same semantic data model and can be queried via the same API. You can change and customize built in types and make your own utilizing all the capabilities of object oriented programming. 8 P a g e

9 Examples of data query For example, to write out the names of all objects in WAF you can make this basic query: foreach (var o in WAFContext.Session.GetContents()) { Response.Write(o.Name); } To get all objects that is part of the menu hierarchy: foreach (var o in WAFContext.Session.GetContents<HierarchicalContent>()) { Response.Write(o.Name); } To get a list of all users from a particular country: WAFContext.Session.Query<SystemUser>().Where(AqlSystemUser.Country == France ).Execute(); The query language is typed checked at compile time and supports concepts such as group by, nested inner joins, aggregate functions etc: An example of an inner join between users and user groups: var group = new AqlAliasUserGroup(); var user = new AqlAliasSystemUser(); var relation = new AqlAliasRelUserGroup(group, user); var query = new AqlQuery(WAFContext.Session); query.from(relation); var groupname = query.select(group.groupname); query.where(user.country == "France" user.country == "England"); query.orderby(user.changedate); query.distinct = true; var result = query.execute(); var groupnames = new List<string>(); while (result.read()) groupnames.add(groupname.value); This query will return a list of names of all user groups that has users from France or England. Since everything you work with is compiled classes and you get the full benefits of super fast performance and good integration with Visual Studio and support for full intellisense on all custom defined classes. 9 P a g e

10 Why is semantic data modelling so important? Our motivation for making WAF was that we saw that most websites were becoming increasingly complex and that page publication was just a small part of it. Sure, today most CMS systems come with a lot of added modules for functionality like Blog, E-shop etc, and so do WAF, but the problem is that the websites are becoming increasingly integrated with the business processes of a company, and every company has different needs. Sometimes standardized module can help you out, but often you need to build things from scratch as it is not possible to customizing the standard modules enough or using the modules will result in hard compromises on the functionality. Custom building things from scratch is time consuming and expensive. In addition, the customized systems become disconnected from the rest of the website and have separate UI. With the semantic data modelling capabilities of WAF you do not need to create separate customized systems. WAF will generate the code and database fields for you automatically and it all becomes part of a tightly integrated system. To summarize, the key aim with WAF is to: Combine the freedom and flexibility found in custom built software with the cost and user-friendliness found in standardized software 10 P a g e

11 Some words about processes outside the context page view execution An important aspect of WAF is the ability to run application threads outside the context of a page view. Often it is difficult to complete an operation during the execution of a page view, and sometimes you want to perform the operation at regular intervals during the week completely disconnected to a page view. Examples could be sending out thousands of SMS s or compiling complex financial reports in PDF from multiple data sources. In WAF all of this can be achieved within the context of IIS. There is no need to set up a separate Windows Service. This makes hosting less complicated and you can install in shared hosting environments that are available at a very low cost. ( or ) WAF utilizes the Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) to manage the processes. In fact behind every dialogue you see in WAF there is a running workflow. This is something that is unique to WAF and makes it very easy to manage and control complicated interface dialogue sequences. WAF extends the WF framework with an interface API that utilizes AJAX for real time interface updates. A typical example is a process progress bar. A key feature of Windows Workflow Foundation is the ability to release threads and serialize the workflow object to the database while it is waiting for input from the user. This is critical if you want to handle dialogues to many users simultaneously. Otherwise you would quickly run out of the 20 or so ASP.Net threads. Here is a very simple example on how you make own workflow: Add a C# class file to the App_Code folder, call it Test.cs Add this code to the class: using System; using System.Threading; using WAF.Engine.Workflow.Methods; public class Test : WorkflowMethod { public override NextCall Invoke(WorkflowMethod invoker) { Info.InBackgroundMode = false; Info.Caption = "Test workflow running"; for (int i = 0; i < 100; i++) { Thread.Sleep(100); Info.Description = "Processing item " + i; Info.PercentageComplete = i; } return null; } } To run this workflow from any template you can write: WAFContext.StartWorkflowMethod(new Test()); 11 P a g e

12 You may also make the process run automatically every midnight by adding a scheduled task in the system module: And then enter the following settings: 12 P a g e

13 When you save and close this dialogue it will run every day after midnight. You may also start it instantly by clicking the Run button: It is beyond the scope of this quick guide to go further into this, but it is an important architectural feature of WAF and can add invaluable functionality that will take your web applications to a new level. (Workflows can also be created using the Workflow Designer in Visual Studio, but to our experience it is has some performance issues and it is often easier to just write the code by hand as in this example. A new designer is coming in with.net 4.0 and Visual Studio 2010 and this is much better.) 13 P a g e

14 Making your own templates Templates in WAF are just normal.aspx files and is created and edited in Visual Studio. You can organize them and put them in any folder you like. You can make use of all ASP.NET controls and build master pages and user controls to create the templates you need for your site. To make a new template try this: Copy the existing template file call Article.aspx under the folder Templates. Once you have created the.aspx file you must create a template instance in WAF that refers to this file. Open the template module: Then double click on the article2.aspx file and click on the button Create template for this file. Next, click the Select button as shown below to select. 14 P a g e

To make an article use this template open an article in the contents module and select the Options tab: You can change the appearance of

15 You may edit the template file directly in WAF by clicking on the Codebehind File tab, but for most of the time we recommend using Visual Studio to edit the templates. To make an article use this template open an article in the contents module and select the Options tab: You can change the appearance of template in Visual Studio. To change the template of a number of articles in one go you can enable the Show advanced property options : This will open a dialogue where you can change any property value on many contents on one go. 15 P a g e

16 Creating your own content class Open the Semantics module. And select New Class: Type the class name NewTestClass and let it inherit from HierarchicalContent. Then, add a property named MyProperty of type HTML 16 P a g e

17 Next, compile the changes by selecting Full rebuild in the menu under New Definitions. Now the system will make the necessary changes to the database and generate the class files in the App_Code folder. When the compilation is complete you can add the class to the site: Now you re ready to use the new content class. Select New in the content menu and the new class will appear in the menu: 17 P a g e

18 Standard modules Welcome The default opening module with information about the latest traffic and last edited documents. Content The default module for editing all content. Newsletter A module for sending out newsletters. SMS and MMS A module for sending and receiving SMS and MMS messages. File library A module for sharing files across multiple sites and contents. Blog A module creating blogs in your site. Forum A module for creating forums in your site. Templates A module for editing and managing template files and stylesheets. Semantics A module for setting up and modifying the data model. This includes classes, relations, enumerations and content cultures. User A module for organizing users and user groups. User groups are key to controlling user permissions. Explorer A module for directly accessing the file system. Can be used to upload and download large number of files. It supports uploading and expansion of large ZIP archives. System A module for monitoring the load status of the system and make system changes like moving the database, downloading the whole site or re-index all documents etc. Wastebin A module where all deleted objects are stored when they are deleted. 18 P a g e

19 Other key functionality Other key functionality not mentioned in this guide: A free text search engine based on Lucene that enables searches across all fields and text inside files like PDF, Word, Excel, Windows Write. Etc A built in gateway for sending large quantities of , SMS and MMS Out of the box integration with Google Analytics. Including a simple API to access their REST API for querying analytics data server side. Word like inline spellchecker in for all major languages. Functionality in development and soon to be released: A Forms module, enabling non technical users to create and manage forms. A LINQ provider Visit side controls to make template creation easier E-commerce module Some examples of what is possible with WAF P a g e

Webnodes Developers Manual

Webnodes Webnodes Developers Manual Framework programming manual Administrator 1/1/2010 Webnodes Developers manual Webnodes Overview... 5 Definitions and meanings of words... 5 Introduction... 5 Key components...