Alfresco iOS Mobile Application Details and Design"

Mike Hatfield - Senior Engineer, Mobile Team"Marc Dubresson - Director of Mobile Products"

Who are we?"

Marc Dubresson •  Mobile Product Management"

Gavin Cornwell Mike Hatfield •  Alfresco Mobile Development Core Team"

Zia

•  Outsourced Mobile Development Partner"•  Platinum Alfresco Professional Services & OEM Partner"

Agenda"

•  Today’s News •  Architecture Overview •  CMIS Refresher •  Demo •  Technical Walkthrough •  Open Source Project •  Roadmap •  Questions?

Alfresco Mobile 1.1"

Architecture Overview"

Mostly a CMIS application talking to Alfresco Several features specific to Alfresco

Alfresco  

CMIS  

REST  

CMIS Refresher"

CMIS Technical Committee Goals & Scope • Content Management Interoperability Services"• Enable applications to target different ECM repositories uniformly"• Provide a set of basic services enabling richer ECM applications

and use cases"• All for loose coupling of an ECM application on the underlying

repository"• Use popular protocol bindings"• REST / AtomPub"• Web Services / SOAP"•  v1.1 - JSON (Browser Binding)"

Demo"

Alfresco Mobile in Action – A Few Features • CMIS: "•  Login to Alfresco over HTTP or HTTPS"• Browse, Search, Display Content and Edit Metadata, Upload Files"• Create Folders"

• Alfresco"• Activities"•  Like & Unlike"• Comment on Documents"

•  iOS"•  Local Downloads"•  “Open In...” support to/from other apps"

Design"

• Universal binary"• Hierarchy of Table Views"• Navigation based app for browsing CMIS repositories"• Layered on Alfresco specific functionality"

Designed for the iPad"

•  Navigation based app but with iPad-specific view controllers "•  Split View Controller"•  Still a universal binary"

CMIS AtomPub Binding (XML)"

Alfresco REST API (JSON)"

App Launch / Sites / Browse"

•  iOS: Read user settings"•  CMIS: Retrieve AtomPub Service Document"•  Alfresco: Request Sites List"•  CMIS: Request folder children for the Root Collection"•  CMIS: Navigate into a folder or site"

Activities"

•  Alfresco: Retrieve user’s activity feed"

•  User taps a document table cell"•  CMIS: Retrieve Document via

getObjectByID service"

•  User taps the “info icon” "•  CMIS: Retrieve Document Metadata

using getTypeDefinition service"

Search"

Execute a CMIS Query •  Full-text search:"• SELECT * FROM cmis:document WHERE

CONTAINS(‘keywords’)!

•  Search by cmis:name:"• SELECT * FROM cmis:document WHERE

CONTAINS(‘~cmis:name:’*keywords*’)!

Tools for iOS Development"

Mac with OS X Snow Leopard or Lion

XCode 4.2 • Integrated Development Environment"• Integrated Build System"• Debugger"• Interface Builder"•  iOS Simulator

Instruments • Performance and behaviour analysis"

Getting Started "

Create an iOS developer account (free)

Install the latest version of XCode 4.2 (free)

Clone the repository • git clone https://ziadev@bitbucket.org/ziadev/alfresco-mobile.git"

Open the Project

Multiple Targets in the Project"

Two Targets: Alfresco & Fresh Docs

Build and Run"

Select a target and the iOS Simulator to Use

How do I install it on my device?"

See iOS Provisioning Portal Resources & How-To Guides

Sign up for a (paid) iOS Developer Program Account

Configure profile: Development certificate, App Id Provision Device (UDID)

Configure & build the App for the device

I Thought This Was A DevCon?"

AlfrescoAppDelegate.h

Calling an AtomPub Service"

CMIS  RESTful  Request  

AtomPub  XML  

Alfresco  

Creating an HTTP Request"

•  Using ASIHTTPRequest build the request

•  The delegate handles events from that request

Parsing AtomPub XML"

Event-Driven XML Parsing (SAX) • Parser sends messages (parsing events) to it’s delegates

(callbacks)"

Use NSXMLParser & NSXMLParserDelegate • Recommended by Apple"• Native API"• Objective-C based implementation"

Why not use the Tree-based API (DOM)? • Apple does not provide the API for iOS"

NSXMLParser & NSXMLParserDelegate"

Setting up NSXMLParser

NSXMLParserDelegate methods

• – parser:didStartElement:namespaceURI:qualifiedName:attributes:"• – parser:didEndElement:namespaceURI:qualifiedName:"• – parser:foundCharacters:"

Calling Alfresco REST APIs"

RESTful  HTTP  Request  

JSON  

Alfresco  

JSON data transport"

Simpler to consume than XML

Using SBJson •  Other libraries available, e.g. TouchJSON, JSONKit"•  iOS 5.0 supports JSON natively"

Parses into NSDictionary and NSArray objects

CMIS 1.1 will contain a Browser Binding

What do I need to know?"•  Objective-C •  cocoadevcentral.com/d/learn_objectivec"

•  iOS App Programming •  developer.apple.com"

•  Alfresco RESTful API •  wiki.alfresco.com"

•  CMIS AtomPub Binding •  wiki.alfresco.com/wiki/CMIS"

•  Git •  gitref.org"

Common Design Patterns"

Model-View-Controller • A pattern to relate the user interface to an underlying data model."

Delegation • A patten where an object, the delegator, delegates tasks to an

associated helper object, the delegate."• The delegate is responsible for executing the task for the delegator."

Target-Action • Target-action is a design pattern in which an object holds the

information necessary to send a message to another object when an event occurs."

API’s and Libraries Used"Cocoa Touch Frameworks • The API’s Apple provides to build an iOS application"

ASIHTTPRequest • Wrapper around Apple’s CFNetwork API"

SBJson • Fast, simple & clean JSON parser and generator"

ISO8601 • XML date parsing"

Flurry Analytics • Remote logging for app crashes (uncaught exceptions)"

Open Source Availability"

Hosted on Bitbucket

bit.ly/alf-mobile

Search for “alfresco-mobile” at bitbucket.org!

Released under the Mozilla Public License Version 1.1

How Do I Contribute?"

Step-by-step example for forking and sending a pull request: http://bit.ly/pbIDRk (atlassian.com wiki)

Resources"Apple iOS Developer Portal •  Sample Code, API Documentation, Design Guides, Developer Videos, etc.!"

Books •  Beginning iPhone 4 Development (Apress Publishing)"•  Programming in Objective-C (Sam’s Publishing)"

Many Developer Blogs •  http://icepla.net"

Also: Twitter, StackOverflow

Roadmap"

Next version •  Alfresco Cloud"

•  Multiple Repositories"

•  ...More"

Integration

•  Leading productivity apps such as PDF Expert and QuickOffice"

Android"

Additional Alfresco Mobile Apps"

What else? > marc.dubresson@alfresco.com"

Q & A"