using FormPublisher for managing content in SSIs

Just wanted to see how other companies are dealing with using FormsPublisher to manage content within server side includes. Given that an SSI is just a fragment of a page, you really cant preview it as you would a normal web page (its just bits and pieces of code) without "faking it" within the context of a real page.

Currently, we use one tpl which checks to see if the user is previewing the page or really generating it. If it is really being generated, the tpl calls a separate iwpt_compile.ipl command to generate the SSI based on the data in the current DCR. If it is just a preview, the tpl outputs an inline string of code in place of the SSI call.

This way of doing it then presents some difficulties when it comess time to submit the file, since now you have the main page (which calls the SSI) and also the SSI, but when you submit the DCR/output file, it only attaches the output file and the underlying DCR, not the SSI which is also just been updated via the same generate operation. Business users are not going to know (or want to deal with) navigating around to find the needed SSI, so to deal with this I have written some code within the workflow which checks to see which file is attached to the workflow, and if it matches a regexp known to require a "child" SSI, it adds the SSI to the <files> element of the workflow.

All of this is really feeling like a hack to me. Anyone have any best practices around this?

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gzevin

I've done a number of such solutions. However, my view on this is that the user does not need to create a new category for an SSI by themselves. If this category does not exist, in one case we have a workflow that assigns a set of task to a specific person, and when an SSI item is created, it is copied to ALL the relevant workareas. So, basically, there is no need to attach any SSIs for the 'content creation' part of the workflow.

as far as the preview is concerned, I have done a numberof preview pages - one for the content that is being previewed (without an appropriate SSI), and also for the SSI part of the workflow as well ..

Greg Zevin, Ph.D. Comp. Sc.
Independent Interwoven Consultant/Architect
Sydney, AU