XML Import & Exportfor uP 2 Using Cernunnos

Andrew Petro & Drew WillsApril 2007 uPortal Dev Meeting

Johns Hopkins University

© Copyright Unicon, Inc., 2006. This work is the intellectual property of Unicon, Inc. Permission is granted for this material to be shared for non-commercial, educational purposes, provided that this copyright statement appears on the reproduced materials and notice is given that the copying is by permission of Unicon, Inc. To disseminate otherwise or to republish requires written permission from Unicon, Inc.

Introduction

• These slides provide some basic information

about a prototype Import/Export tool

developed for uPortal 2.5 and later by Drew

Wills

• Much more information is available on the

wiki page describing today’s discussion:

uP2 XML import export 2007 JHU Dev Meeting Slot

Motivation

• uPortal doesn’t work without some basic data

– Users

– Groups

– Channels

– Layouts

– etc.

• Although every uPortal release comes with a viable

data set, every institution needs to customize this

data extensively to meet their individual needs

Motivation (Cont.)

• Editing this data where it lives (i.e. data.xml)

is confusing, tedious, and risky!

• Using uPortal’s UI to edit the data isn’t

reproducible by automated means

Solution

• Storing the data in XML is great because

tools like Subversion can manage it smoothly

• But the XML format used by data.xml is

inaccessible to human beings

• It would be better to store this data in a

collection of smaller XML documents with

domain-specific schemas

Solution (Cont.)

• These documents can be more succinct and

manageable by conveying information

structurally that data.xml must convey

explicitly (e.g parent-child relationships, entity

types)

• Also these documents can avoid referencing

database IDs, allowing entities to be imported

and exported ad hoc – even from one portal

database to another!

Example XML Document

<layout username="student" script="classpath://org/jasig/portal/layout/simple/import-layout.crn">

<root name="Root folder" immutable="N" unremovable="Y">

<header name="Header folder" immutable="Y" unremovable="Y">

<channel fname="header"/>

<channel fname="portal/login/general"/>

</header>

<tab name="Main Student Tab" immutable="N" unremovable="N">

<column name="Column 2" immutable="N" unremovable="N">

<channel fname="salon.com"/>

</column>

<column name="Column 1" immutable="N" unremovable="N">

<channel fname="minesweeper"/>

<channel fname="word-of-the-day"/>

<channel fname="number-guessing-game"/>

</column>

</tab>

<footer name="Footer folder" immutable="N" unremovable="N">

<channel fname="footer"/>

</footer>

</root>

</layout>

Data in uPortal

• Information in the portal database represents the following classes of entities:

– Minor Items (version info., sequences, etc.)

– Users

– Groups

– Channels

– Group Memberships

– Permissions

– Layouts

• Items that appear lower on this list often depend on items that appear higher (viz. foreign keys)

Status of the Prototype

• Work on the prototype started with Layouts (DLM) and proceeded “backwards”

• The prototype currently includes both import and export through Groups

• Which leaves:

– Minor Items

– Users

• It works in uPortal 2.5.3 (AFAIK)

• It hasn’t been tried in any other version

Design of the Prototype

• Import & export operations were mostly implemented in Cernunnos scripts

• Cernunnos is a recent open source project hosted by Google Code with exactly one committer (me)

• In a nutshell, Cernunnos provides flexible Java implementations for common behaviors and allows them to be “instrumented” through a lightweight XML syntax

• Source code and documentation for Cernunnos is available at Google Code:

– http://code.google.com/p/cernunnos/

Example Cernunnos Script

<file-iterator includes="**/*.jar">

<with-attribute key="JAR_NAME" value="${req(Attributes.LOCATION)}">

<echo-ln>${req(JAR_NAME)}:</echo-ln>

<archive-iterator>

<if test="${jexl(Attributes.LOCATION.contains('${req($1)}'))}">

<echo-ln prefix="&#009;">${req(Attributes.LOCATION)}</echo-ln>

</if>

</archive-iterator>

<echo-ln/>

</with-attribute>

</file-iterator>

Using the Prototype

• The prototype Import/Export tool is attached

as a ZIP to the wiki page about this

discussion

• To use it, extract the contents into the root of

a uPortal 2.5 (or later) distribution

Using the Prototype (Cont.)

• Invoke it from the command line using Ant– ant –f import-export.xml export –Ddir={dir} –Dtype={type} [–

Dsysid={sysid}]

– ant –f import-export.xml import [-Ddir={dir}] [-Dpattern={pattern}]

dir = a file system directory

type = all | layout | all-layouts | channel | all-channels | all-permissions | all-memberships | group | all-groups

sysid = user_name | fname |group_name

pattern = a regex expression

Drew Willsdrew@unicon.net

http://code.google.com/p/cernunnos/

Questions?