LiveSite Queries

Hi All,

I was going through livesite developer pdf and I have few queries about livesite to make me more clear understanding of livesite use.
These things are basics of livesite but not clear in the developer pdf

1. Why preview of a component is attached to a site? If I created a page and the preview with different sites then how does it going to affect the look and feel of the component?

2. If I want to create a new site say support.xyz.com then i will create a new site in the livesite and I will create its pages under page directory but if my support site needs to be in multiple branches then how will this work ?

3. All the pages are created with .page extension. If I want to create a html jsp or asp page then how do I create those pages using livesite

4. LiveSite is to edit the pages on the live server. Add new components to the page or create new pages etc. But I didnt understand still how a user will edit the page on live server. As much I can see user will create a new page in TeamSite under livesite area and then that page has to be deployed to the liveserver with the normal deployment workflow which is same as of TeamSite. Does this work like this or I have wrong understanding.

This product is really cool becasue u its completely based on Java which is much more powerful than perl :-)

Looking forward to your response.

LiveSite2.1

cheers!!

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Comments

jkm

Anyone got idea on the posted queries or Shanon can you pitch in this as very few people are using livesite :-)

shanon

Hey there,

In reply to:

1. Why preview of a component is attached to a site? If I created a page and the preview with different sites then how does it going to affect the look and feel of the component?

Because sites are attached to branches (ie. one or more workarea) and branches contain content. All content in a branch is shared by all sites in the branch (at least OOTB), and the components need a context. You may notice when you have a File datum and select a file, that there's a $URL_PREFIX prepended to the workarea-relative path. Well, at runtime (ie. preview or a disparate runtime instance), that variable resolves to the workarea root. So, to answer your question, if the sites are in different branches, then the component's appearance will depend on the available content ( dcrs, images, css ) that it utilizes that may ( or may not ) be present.

In reply to:

2. If I want to create a new site say support.xyz.com then i will create a new site in the livesite and I will create its pages under page directory but if my support site needs to be in multiple branches then how will this work ?

Well, since sites are branch-dependent, you will need to figure out some means to put all of the necessary content (and pages) into the same branch and deploy that branch to your runtime instance. This will usually involve replication of the necessary content to the aggregate branch. Frankly, it depends on your use-case... do you really need content in different branches? I would try to avoid that right now. Rest assured, we know about it and are working towards a better solution for a future release.

In reply to:

3. All the pages are created with .page extension. If I want to create a html jsp or asp page then how do I create those pages using livesite

The LiveSite runtime environment supports HTML and the .page files OOTB. If you would like to run ASP or JSP, you will need to customize the deployments. I don't recommend ASP because (a) i'm biased and (b) LiveSite is 100% java and runs in Tomcat; JSP is a much better fit. As far as HTML is concerned, you may use the Actions>Generate HTML functionality in CCPRO to convert a page to HTML. As you may guess, this will cause each component in the page to be executed at that time and the result HTML will be static when deployed to a webserver ( or LiveSite runtime ).

In reply to:

4. LiveSite is to edit the pages on the live server. Add new components to the page or create new pages etc. But I didnt understand still how a user will edit the page on live server. As much I can see user will create a new page in TeamSite under livesite area and then that page has to be deployed to the liveserver with the normal deployment workflow which is same as of TeamSite. Does this work like this or I have wrong understanding.

You're correct except for that there's a component (Edit Page Link or something) that may be set onto any page. When that page is viewed on the runtime and clicked, it brings the user back to TeamSite and opens the Page Editor for that specific page. Of course you must (a) have connectivity to TeamSite (b) have permission to edit that page. After you make the changes, you resubmit the page using the OOTB LiveSite submit workflow and you will see your changes immediately on the site.

HTH,

Shanon

jkm

Hi Shanon,
Great thanks for your reply..

1. Preview Sites
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Because sites are attached to branches (ie. one or more workarea) and branches contain content. All content in a branch is shared by all sites in the branch (at least OOTB), and the components need a context. You may notice when you have a File datum and select a file, that there's a $URL_PREFIX prepended to the workarea-relative path. Well, at runtime (ie. preview or a disparate runtime instance), that variable resolves to the workarea root. So, to answer your question, if the sites are in different branches, then the component's appearance will depend on the available content ( dcrs, images, css ) that it utilizes that may ( or may not ) be present
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

if I have multiple sites like a.site, b.site and c.site files in one branch and for preview of my component I use any of the site for context then component preview will be same becasue as you hav said components depends upon dcr, images or css and these things are provided in the component itself not on the site level. So preview wont differ. Correct ?

2. Content in multiple branches for one site : thanks for the answer, its clear now.

3. .page and .html extension
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The LiveSite runtime environment supports HTML and the .page files OOTB. If you would like to run ASP or JSP, you will need to customize the deployments. I don't recommend ASP because (a) i'm biased and (b) LiveSite is 100% java and runs in Tomcat; JSP is a much better fit. As far as HTML is concerned, you may use the Actions>Generate HTML functionality in CCPRO to convert a page to HTML. As you may guess, this will cause each component in the page to be executed at that time and the result HTML will be static when deployed to a webserver ( or LiveSite runtime ).

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I didnt understand what do you mean by customization of deployments here for the generation of asp or jsp pages. Is there any config change I need to do to generate these pages with this extenstion or is there any document for the same.
We can use generateHTML for HTML pages but this is an extra step for the users. Becasue they are first generating the .page and then selecting the file to generate .html. For a normal use case user wants to see,

1. Click on the page on live server.
2. Invokes the page in LS page Editor
3. make the changes and after saving page its live again on WebServer

but here in the step 3 user has to save the page and then user will generate the html and then deployment will happen :-(

4.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
You're correct except for that there's a component (Edit Page Link or something) that may be set onto any page. When that page is viewed on the runtime and clicked, it brings the user back to TeamSite and opens the Page Editor for that specific page. Of course you must (a) have connectivity to TeamSite (b) have permission to edit that page. After you make the changes, you resubmit the page using the OOTB LiveSite submit workflow and you will see your changes immediately on the site
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
When do you say Edit link is provided on the page like SCE then any external user can have access to that link, If yes then we need to have tight security management for the page but TS security will help to do that :-)
Is this LiveSite submit workflow provided with installation as I am not able to see that.

Shanon, any other documents for livesite if you can share will be great help to understand the complete mechanism. Developer guide has information only about development of components but it doesnt have any information how the rest of process will work ?

cheeers

shanon

In reply to:

if I have multiple sites like a.site, b.site and c.site files in one branch and for preview of my component I use any of the site for context then component preview will be same becasue as you hav said components depends upon dcr, images or css and these things are provided in the component itself not on the site level. So preview wont differ. Correct ?

yes, unless you are doing something site-specific in your xsl skin ( which is totally not recommended ).

In reply to:

I didnt understand what do you mean by customization of deployments here for the generation of asp or jsp pages. Is there any config change I need to do to generate these pages with this extenstion or is there any document for the same.
We can use generateHTML for HTML pages but this is an extra step for the users. Becasue they are first generating the .page and then selecting the file to generate .html. For a normal use case user wants to see,

1. Click on the page on live server.
2. Invokes the page in LS page Editor
3. make the changes and after saving page its live again on WebServer

but here in the step 3 user has to save the page and then user will generate the html and then deployment will happen :-(

You're always going to have to deploy your changes to the webserver -- there is no auto-deployment mechanism OOTB. This is standard TeamSite fx... However, you can generate the HTML as a workflow task and skip the step entirely. While this code is written, I'm not sure how robust it is... I'll check it out and if it's okay, I'll let you know how to use it. v2.2 will surely have this support, but until then you may need to do Actions>Generate HTML. Still, I am confused. Why are you using HTML instead of the .pages anyway? You don't want to use LiveSite's runtime environment?

In reply to:

When do you say Edit link is provided on the page like SCE then any external user can have access to that link, If yes then we need to have tight security management for the page but TS security will help to do that :-)
Is this LiveSite submit workflow provided with installation as I am not able to see that.

Well, any external user can have access if you don't create a Login module... if your site is protected than only certain people may access it ( this requires the LiveSite runtime and custom coding however). Stlil, IMO TS security should be enough. The LiveSite workflow is called wft_livesite_opendeploy.wft ( or something like that ) and is in the iwhome/local/config/lib/wft directory. Check out the .cfg file of the same basename for cfg options. This stuff _should_ be in docs.

As far as further doc goes, it's in progress. LiveSite is still very new and there are a ton of great features that need to be covered ( with more being added daily ). We're working on a better set for v2.2 due out Q4/EQ1.

Thanks,

Shanon

jkm

Hi Shanon,
Great thanks for the clarifications ..
last clarification for the time :-)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
You're always going to have to deploy your changes to the webserver -- there is no auto-deployment mechanism OOTB. This is standard TeamSite fx... However, you can generate the HTML as a workflow task and skip the step entirely. While this code is written, I'm not sure how robust it is... I'll check it out and if it's okay, I'll let you know how to use it. v2.2 will surely have this support, but until then you may need to do Actions>Generate HTML. Still, I am confused. Why are you using HTML instead of the .pages anyway? You don't want to use LiveSite's runtime environment?
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I am using .html page because these pages I want to see on the live server .html not .page. My page shud be www.abc.com/index.html .. doesnt make sense to me if www.abc.com/index.page .. Or you recommend to use .page on the live server as well . Please clarify if I am wrong

cheers

Migrateduser

How to get the page size in live site i.e. how to calculate the end of the page?

chicka

Hi Shanon,
Great thanks for the clarifications ..
last clarification for the time :-)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
You're always going to have to deploy your changes to the webserver -- there is no auto-deployment mechanism OOTB. This is standard TeamSite fx... However, you can generate the HTML as a workflow task and skip the step entirely. While this code is written, I'm not sure how robust it is... I'll check it out and if it's okay, I'll let you know how to use it. v2.2 will surely have this support, but until then you may need to do Actions>Generate HTML. Still, I am confused. Why are you using HTML instead of the .pages anyway? You don't want to use LiveSite's runtime environment?
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I am using .html page because these pages I want to see on the live server .html not .page. My page shud be www.abc.com/index.html .. doesnt make sense to me if www.abc.com/index.page .. Or you recommend to use .page on the live server as well . Please clarify if I am wrong

cheers

HI Shanon,
I have a requirement where the modified changes in the page through Livesite should update Database as well. (Something whcih we can compare with DD depolyment from a content DCR). Is this acheivable in Livesite3.x and curious to know why Livesite PDFs are not much informative compared to other component's article.