Jivespace Community Blog

Finally, a Place to Trade Recipes

steve — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 23:32:41 GMT

A week ago Greg wrote about the changes we recently made to simplify Jive's communities. You'll now find four communities -- Support, Features, Developers, and Plugin Downloads -- under one community to collect them all: Jivespace. I'm chiming in this week with details on changes to docs for developers building customizations to Clearspace.

Here it is in a nutshell: The latest developer documentation will be in the Developers community in Jivespace. That community is also the place to post your questions and comments. Other content, including developer content from previous versions, will be on the site where docs have been for some time now.

The best part, as I see it -- and really, I think this is fantastic -- is that it's not just docs. There's a lot more information: FAQs, how-tos, links to more information, and more. Internally, we started out calling it a "cookbook" (okay, Greg called it a cookbook and we humored him for a while). But while it wasn't really as procedural and example-driven as software cookbooks tend to be, it was obvious he was on to something. You (and we) really needed a single place to collect the knowledge we develop internally for extending and customizing Clearspace.

If you've been to the Developers overview page, you might also have noticed that we've tried to make it easier to get to what you care about. The search box and "spotlight areas" are designed to help you find developer content without leaving the developers' stuff if you don't want to.

By the way, there are no longer any Forums or older Clearspace docs on Jivespace. It had gotten to be kind of a mess (a "train wreck," as one of its admirers said). We're thinking it's better to have one version of developer content on the Developers community, and the rest of it where other docs live. See what you think.

Here are the links of interest:

Developers -- current Clearspace developer content
Latest archived Clearspace doc content (for earlier versions, replace "latest" in the URL with a version number -- such as "2.5.2")
Links to documentation for all Jive products

Customization Part 5: Web Services

dawn — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 16:20:46 GMT

This post is the fifth in a series of blog posts about customizing for Clearspace 2.x. The previous posts covered:

Several changes were made in Clearspace 2.0 that could impact your web services code, whether the code is for a client or new service. Generally, these changes were made to make the API easier to use, to add functionality (such as support for REST, new in version 2), or to remove a little-used feature that couldn't be made to work well.

ln version 2 Clearspace web services are built on the CXF framework. CXF evolved from XFire, the framework on which Clearspace version 1 web services were built. When upgrading, be sure to update your classpath to replace the XFire JAR file with the CXF JAR.
SOAP-based web services no longer support caching; references to caching have been removed from the web service client API.
If you're using the Clearspace web service client API (for SOAP web services), you'll need to update your references to some classes. To clarify the difference between the standard and web service client APIs, some class names were prefixed with "WS". The Upgrading Extensions to Version 2 documentation contains a list of the renamed classes; these are all in the com.jivesoftware.community.webservices package. Of course, this also means that signatures for some of the methods within the API itself have changed where these types were used.
Update some API references where arrays were used so that collections are used instead.
The .NET client API is no longer available. If you've got a .NET client, you'll need to rewrite it using another web service client library.
If you've written web services that expose Clearspace functionality, note that the WSUtil.getJiveContext method has been removed. Instead, as noted in the description of API changes, you should use Spring properties to obtain manager references.
Web services you've included in a plugin are no longer declared in the plugin.xml file. In version 2, when writing a web service for deployment in a plugin, you declare the web service in a spring.xml file included in your plugin. Use the conventions described in the Apache CXF user's guide.Here's an example

<bean id="echoServiceImpl" class="com.jivesoftware.clearspace.plugin.example.webservices.EchoServiceImpl /">
    
<bean id="saajInInterceptor" class="org.apache.cxf.binding.soap.saaj.SAAJInInterceptor" ></bean>
    <bean id="wss4jInInterceptor" class="org.apache.cxf.ws.security.wss4j.WSS4JInInterceptor">
        <constructor-arg>
            <map>
                <entry key="passwordCallbackClass"
                    value="com.jivesoftware.community.webservices.server.xfire.PasswordHandler" ></entry>
                <entry key="action" value="UsernameToken" ></entry>
            </map>
        </constructor-arg>
    </bean>
    <bean id="validationCheckInterceptor"
        class="com.jivesoftware.community.webservices.server.xfire.ValidationCheckInterceptor">
    <property name="jiveUserDetailsService" ref="jiveUserDetailsService" ></property>
</bean>

<jaxws:endpoint id="echoService" address="/soap/EchoService">
    <jaxws:implementor>
        <ref bean="echoServiceImpl" ></ref>
    </jaxws:implementor>
    <jaxws:inInterceptors>
        <ref bean="saajInInterceptor" ></ref>
        <ref bean="wss4jInInterceptor" ></ref>
        <ref bean="validationCheckInterceptor" ></ref>
    </jaxws:inInterceptors>
</jaxws:endpoint>

In version 2 WSDL operation params have friendly names. You should get new version 2 WSDL.
In version 1 accessing web services via XML-RPC used two extra parameters for username and password; version 2 uses basic auth instead.

The information above along with more details can be found in the Upgrading Extensions to 2.0 documentation.

We also have a video (with an attached presentation) that shows more about using web services to access your data in Clearspace 2.0 with Andrew Wright, Jive Software Engineer.

New Clearspace Plugin Directory Launched!

dawn — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 18:31:19 GMT

We just launched our new Jivespace Plugin Directory for Clearspace plugins! You can now more easily find and download plugins from Jivespace, and if you are developing plugins, you can add your plugins to the new directory.

The really cool part is that we created the entire plugin directory as a plugin to Clearspace. Our web engineer, Tim, took our existing document content type and extended it to create a new plugin type with additional information relevant to plugins along with a new look and feel for the plugin directory. He also used the plugin jar to pull almost all of the metadata displayed with the plugins, including license, logo, readme, compatible versions, and much more. For developers, this means that you only need to enter the information in your plugin, instead of having to duplicate all of the information by filling out redundant forms. It also means that when you update your plugin jar file with a new release, the plugin information will be automatically updated.

Tim is currently working on polishing the code a bit, but he will be releasing this as a plugin for other people to use as a plugin marketplace. It also provides a very useful example of how to extend an existing Clearspace content type to create a new content type in Clearspace.

Keep in mind that this is just the first version of our Plugin Directory, and we plan to start making incremental improvements and enhancements. But first, we want to hear from you. Take a look at the new Jivespace Plugin Directory. What do you like? dislike? How can we make this even better in future revisions? Please leave comments with your ideas on this blog post!

More Widget Development in Clearspace 2.0

dawn — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 15:45:45 GMT

Learn all about how to write new widgets for Clearspace 2.0 from Aaron Johnson, Engineering Manager at Jive.

You can also download the Quicktime version (Caution: file is ~285MB), or you can watch a larger version online, which will improve readability of embedded screenshots (recommended).

The entire presentation is also attached below as a PDF file.

You can also watch an earlier video about developing widgets for Clearspace 2.0

Theming in Clearspace 2.0

dawn — Mon, 12 May 2008 16:58:01 GMT

As you know, we changed a few things in our underlying architecture for Clearspace 2.0, including some changes in the Freemarker templates as a result of moving from Webwork to Struts along with some other changes. In this video, Matt Walker, Professional Services Engineer at Jive Software, talks about the process of upgrading existing themes along with plenty of best practices to make your themes more easily upgradeable in the future.

Matt also did an earlier screencast as an Introduction to Skinning Clearspace, which you might also want to watch along with this video.

You can also download the Quicktime version (Caution: file is ~200MB), or you can watch a larger version online, which will improve readability of embedded screenshots (recommended).

The entire presentation is also attached below as a PDF file.

Don't forget to attend the Jivespace weekly chat on Thursday!

dawn — Wed, 07 May 2008 16:09:21 GMT

I wanted to remind everyone that we have a Jivespace weekly group chat scheduled for tomorrow (and every Thursday) from 9-10am Pacific time. During this hour, you can ask any questions about Clearspace development topics to the engineers who wrote the software.

Do you have questions about

how we are using Spring, Struts, Acegi, and more in Clearspace 2.0?
a particularly difficult customization?
writing plugins and widgets?
accessing Clearspace data from other sites using web services?
any other developer topic?

Please feel free to drop in anytime during the hour to ask questions. We also post all of the chat transcripts to Jivespace.

DWR in Clearspace 2.0

dawn — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 22:50:52 GMT

Aaron Johnson, Jive Engineer, presented to our engineering team about how DWR is used in Clearspace 2.0. He started by walking us through an overview of DWR. After the overview, he showed us exactly how he used DWR in his FeedBlog plugin.

This 7 minute video has the highlights from his presentation.

You can watch a larger Flash version or download the Quicktime Movie version (Caution: 1761MB file)

Developer Presentations on theming, plugins, widgets, and more for Clearspace 2.0

dawn — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 20:48:02 GMT

Here are some resources for anyone wanting to migrate to Clearspace 2.0 or just learn more about the development environment for Clearspace 2.0.

A week ago, we did a series of presentations about Clearspace 2.0 development. We also videotaped all of the presentations, but the editing will take some time for the video, so I wanted to go ahead and share PDFs of the presentations now with the Jivespace community. The videos should be coming out at a rate of 1-2 per week over the next few weeks.

I have attached 5 presentations, and I suggest reading them in this order:

Clearspace 2.0 Overview
Theming
Plugins
Widgets
Web Services

Clearspace 2.0.1 Released

dawn — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 19:45:17 GMT

Clearspace 2.0.1 was released last night. It has a number of bug fixes over the 2.0.0 release.

It also has significant improvements to the source build. Several people posted issues with our source build here on Jivespace, and we think that this version should resolve those issues.

Existing customers can download the new source build or the new application files from your "My Account" page. If you want an evaluation version of Clearspace or Clearspace Community 2.0.1, you can find it on the Jivespace downloads page.

Jivespace now running on Clearspace Community 2.0

dawn — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 23:28:14 GMT

I wanted to point out (in case you haven't noticed the difference) that Jivespace and some of our other Jive communities are now running on Clearspace Community 2.0!

You can learn more about our launch of Clearspace 2.0 and our new website by visiting Jive Talks.

With any major upgrade, we can probably expect a few minor issues (despite intensive internal testing). If you notice anything strange or buggy, please post comments here.

Prototype in Clearspace 2.0

dawn — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 18:39:57 GMT

In this video, Clearspace developer, Nick Hill, talks about how Prototype, Scriptaculous and other Javascript technologies are used within Clearspace 2.0. This was originally presented as an internal Jive training to get our developers up to speed on some of the newer technologies used in Clearspace 2.0, and we wanted to share it with other people doing Clearspace development. If you want to learn more about the Clearspace 2.0 beta, you can visit the beta area on Jivespace.

The pdf file with the complete slides from the presentation is attached below.

You can watch a larger Flash version or download the Quicktime Movie version (Caution: 179MB file)

Widget Development in Clearspace 2.0

dawn — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 20:53:27 GMT

I took the best 6 minutes out of a presentation that Fred Brock of Jive Software delivered to our engineering teams to teach all of us about the best ways to develop widgets for Clearspace 2.0. This is a must-see for anyone wanting to write widgets for Clearspace 2.0! I've also attached a PDF version of the slides from Fred's presentation.

Or you can download the Quicktime movie (Caution: ~85MB file)

Friends of Jivespace

dawn — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 21:32:07 GMT

Today, we released Friends of Jivespace, a new blog where key community members can talk about their experiences with Clearspace. So far, we've had 2 community member posts.

Magpie has shared his thoughts on Chaos and Order:

For my inaugural blog on Jivespace I've chosen the subject of Chaos & Order - dichotomy which I believe Clearspace has the potential to fulfil.

I come from a structured world of comprehensive metamodels and complex information management systems. It may seem strange to embrace the world of unstructured information - the enemy for so long. However, to reject is to deny humanity and miss the potential to foster, harvest, and support knowledge sharing and transfer.

I like Clearspace because .... it seeks to embrace having conversations, but with a 21st century twist.

Ryan Rutan's post discusses a few Random Clearspace X Ideas including:

Leveraging the Listener Framework and Filters to process content at create/edit time against a custom dictionary of terms and matching URL structures...and storing meta-data about rendering actions to take into consideration when rendering the document for display. The hopes would be to do one of the following, provide a list of relevant links off to the side of the document that would help drive traffic towards measureable calls to action. If we were bold enough, we could apply these meta-data instructions as a filter, and alter the appearance of the actual words in the content as hyperlinks. This might be too intrusive to our customers, and we'll need to evaluate the nice balance between content ownership and ROI. =)
Abstracting the Ratings Engine in ClearspaceX as a Ratings Service for all content on the website. We've been looking at the possibility, of creating a private community visible only to Admins and WebService loings, and then creating Document Stubs into that community and capturing Ratings regarding non-ClearspaceX pages on those assets, and then surfacing the ratings to the remote sites as well through the same Web Service APIs. Since ClearspaceX is integrated into our SSO solution, we already know that we are talking apples to apples between the 2 systems. We just need to work out logistics of whether or not a user (who is logged in), has a "username" or as we call it "alias" when they rate...and how to handle the corner-cases that stem from that core issue.

You will want to keep an eye on this blog. I suspect that we will have some really interesting posts by other community members in the next few days.

If there are any other community members that you wish were included, please let me know. I would love to add more people to the Friends of Jivespace blog!

Chat with Jive's Clearspace Developer Team every Thursday!

dawn — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 17:01:15 GMT

I just wanted to remind everyone to attend our Jivespace group chat this Thursday (and every Thursday) at 9am Pacific time. Several of the Clearspace core developers and support engineers will be online to answer your questions about Clearspace!

Would you attend a Jive Developer Day Event?

dawn — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 17:15:29 GMT

We are tentatively planning to hold a Jive Developer Day event focused on the Clearspace 2.0 release. But before we make anything official, we wanted to make sure that people were interested in attending.

What I need to know

(See below for details)

Are you interested in attending?
If so, would you also attend an optional Saturday event?
Any suggestions to improve the event?

Target Audience

People writing plugins, customizing, or doing other development on Clearspace.

Tentative Logistics

Location: Jive's World HQ in lovely Portland Oregon

Date: April 10-11

Price: Maybe free or a very small registration fee.

Rough Agenda

4/10

6-8pm Happy hour with a presentation on New Technologies and Implications for Upgrading to Clearspace 2.0.

4/11

8-9: Breakfast / networking
9-9:15: Kickoff with Matt / Bill / Marty
9:15: Session 1 - Tips, Tricks & Best Practices for theming Clearspace 2.0
10-10:15: Break
10:15-11: Session 2 - Widgets to customize home and other pages in Clearspace 2.0
11-11:45: Session 3 - Lessons in upgrading the Google Maps plugin to 2.0
11:45-12:45: Lunch & networking (or working lunch)
12:45-1:30: Session 4 - Plugins and Macros in Clearspace 2.0
1:30-2:15: Session 5 - TBD
2:15-2:30: Break
2:30-3:15: Session 6 - Web Services - what you can do in CS 2.0
3:15-5:15: Coding workshop - Attendees bring their code, ask questions, & get tips from roving Jive engineers
5:15-??: Happy hour & Dinner with Jive developers and brainstorming ideas for improving Clearspace

4/12

If people are interested, we would be happy to organize a fun Saturday event like a wine tasting, bowling, beers of the NW, etc. We'd probably ask people to chip in to cover the costs of this event, but you would get to hang out with cool people from Jive