nav[aria-label="Primary Navigation"] { padding: 0; & ul { list-style: none; width: 100%; display: flex; flex-direction: row; justify-content: start; align-items: start; gap: 30px; padding: 0; & li { margin: 0; } & ul li { list-style: none; } } }

Best Approach - Index of articles

Gregg Faus

I've been deciding on the the best approach to generate an index page of articles. This index page would allow you to go to individual articles and would be regenerated any time an article is added or modified (including deletions).

I would like also like to create this in the most reusable way! So with that said, would this be the best approach/algorithm?

1) In the index tpl file, read the files in the directory of articles. Extract the dcr name by running an iwextattr command. If the dcr is located, extract the title and filename and list it in the generated page.

2) To make sure the index page is regenerated any time an article is modified, run an the iwgen command to recompile the index page. This code is put into the individual article tpl file.

Is this the best way? What won't it do?

Find more posts tagged with

Comments

tvaughan

We've got the same problem, and here's how we managed our solution:

We had two template sections:


news/daily_news
         /data
                     **save the news DCRs here**
         /presentation
                     /daily_news.tpl
         /datacapture.cfg

news/daily_news_index
         /presentation
                     /daily_news_index.tpl
         /datacapture.cfg

Each template section had its own presentation template and datacapture.cfg, except the daily_news_index template section was never "human editable"--- rather, it was called either via a workflow or through a drop-down menu. Note that there's no "data" directory under the index section because it'll never have a DCR of its own; it is completely "virutal"

Here's how it worked:
When a user wants to create a new daily_news page, they go to the daily_news section and select "File->New Data Record." They fill in the DCT and create a new DCR. When they close the DCT after saving the DCR, we set up available_templates.cfg to kick off a workflow

Within that workflow, we make a call to "iwpt_compile.ipl" and we point it at the daily_news_index template. Within the daily_news_index.tpl file, we get a list of the last 5 daily_news DCRs:
@news_dcrs = `ls ../../dailynews/data`

Then we iterate over that list and churn out a table of links to those news files. You can use the iw_load_dcr command (page 120 of TST Dev Guide) to load in the DCRs you want and then extract the info about them, like Subject, Date, etc. Unless you capture the name of the HTML page they get generated as via external attributes or something, you can make a guess as to the name of the generated HTML page if you enforce naming conventions.

To get this to work easily, you have to enforce a naming convention for the daily news DCRs and for the daily news HTML pages. If you don't do that, you're asking for some parsing nightmares. For example, if you `ls` and find a DCR named "051302", it makes your life lots easier if you know that ends up as a "051202_news.html" file.

Tom

Gregg Faus

Just the confirmation I was looking for! I just wanted to make sure I was going about it the right way.

Thanks.

Gregg Faus

A follow up....

I'm almost done but I'm having a problem with regenerating the index page. In my article template, I do a system call to run the presentation compiler against my index template which then regenerated the index page. But I'm getting a "Use of an unitialized value" error. This only occurs when I tried to execute the command (it will work if I comment it out). Here is the relevant part of the tpl:


<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<iw_pt name="Tutorial/How_To">
<iw_perl>
<![CDATA[ 
# Get workarea path
my $workarea = iwpt_get_flag_param('-iw_include-location'); 
my $cmd = "iwperl c:\\iw-home\\bin\\iwpt_compile.ipl -pt 
$workarea\\templatedata\\Admin_Templates\\Homepage\\presentation\\homepage.tpl 
-ofile $workarea\\web\\default.asp";
#iwpt_output($cmd);
]]>
</iw_perl>
<iw_system command="$cmd" />
<![CDATA[

... rest of template here

I've tried running the command in the perl tag too. Is there a different way of doing this?

Thanks.

tvaughan

Hmm . . .

I've never used the iw system command. Since I'm on Solaris, I can just execute commands using the backticks in perl.

I don't know if that works the same way in Windows, but it could be worth a shot.

Tom

P.S. If you don't know what I'm talking about, Perl lets you execute commands with backticks, like this:

`tar cvf sometar.tar ~/myhome/data`

Gregg Faus

Yeah, I tried that. Guess I just posted what would be the "Interwoven" way.

This is what I mean:


<iw_perl><![CDATA[
# Get workarea path
my $workarea = iwpt_get_flag_param('-iw_include-location');
my $cmd = "iwperl c:\\iw-home\\bin\\iwpt_compile.ipl -pt
$workarea\\templatedata\\Admin_Templates\\Homepage\\presentation\\homepage.tpl
-ofile $workarea\\web\\default.asp";
`$cmd`;
]]></iw_perl>

Anyway, I'm sure I'll figure it out. It is really more of a Perl related question.

-gf

Migrateduser

If you're willing to consider using XSLT (it's built into TeamSite's presentation template engine), I have an example that would probably suit your needs.

-- Riley Rainey
Interwoven

Gregg Faus

Sure, any other possibilites are welcome.

I'm in the process of revising my original script. The workflow allows any DCR submissions (Save/Close, Close) to generate the html and index and deploy both files. It will generate the html based off the article title and a 5 digit random number. It is then placed placed into an output directory which is specified in an XML config file.

I'll update this post later when I'm complete.

-gf

Trina

Is it possible if you could show/send me the XSLT sample code. I also am would like to write a .tpl that picks up xml and XSLT to generate index.html.

Thanks in advance :-)

Gregg Faus

Sure. I've attached a TPL that generates an index page. This particular TPL doesn't use a transformation to manipulate the XML, rather it uses just straight PERL.

This TPL is called from another TPL so it expects presentation compiler argument called "xml_summary". You must pass this is or hard code it. The xml summary is the XML you wish to use to generate the index from. Here is a sample of such a file:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<main>
<news>
<article id="1" active="1">
<title>Ancient Bison Found In Colorado Glacier</title>
<pubdate>2002-08-21</pubdate>
<abstract>Museum To Release Information This Week</abstract>
<dcr>ancient_bison_found</dcr>
<output>/news/ancient_bison_found_in_29404.asp</output>
</article>
</news>
</main>

I've also cut a bit of html out of the TPL to simplify the presentation. This particular index arranges articles by the month they were published in.

I can help out more if you like.

- Gregg Faus
Company 39

FAS513PF.dux

Trina

Thank you for replying...Here what I am trying to do is to produce a html page contains list of links - by picking up the .xml and rendering with stylesheet. The problem occurs when user select Preview on the DCT because the Preview page temporary created at the root level, whereas all my href links linking to the sub-directory.

The 3 pages I have created as follows:

in abc.tpl
<iw_perl>
<![CDATA[
my $link_path = "home/subdir"; # this value is not static...
my $xmlfile = "myrec.xml";
my $param = iwpt_get_flag_param('-oprefix');
my $xsltfile;
if ($param ne "") # Preview page or Generate?
{
$xsltfile = "somepath/dothis.xsl";
} else {
$xsltfile = "somepath/dothat.xsl";
}
]]></iw_perl>
<iwov_xslt xsl_file="$xsltfile">
<iw_include file="$file_list"/>
</iwov_xslt>

file myrec.xml
<collections>
<col>
<title>blah blah blah</title>
<link>welcome.htm</title>
</col>
</collections>

file preview.xsl
This page must be able to pick up $link_path in .tpl above and embeded as shown...
<xsl:stylesheet>
.......
<a><xsl:attribute name="href">home/subdir/<xsl:value-of select="link"/></xsl:attribute><xsl:value-of select="title"/></a>
..........</xsl:stylesheet>

Any suggestions are very much appreciated. :-)

Gregg Faus

Is there a reason why you must create your links in a relative manor rather then absolute? I'm sure you could configure proxy server, but it'd be better to use absolute paths.

Migrateduser

I am dealing with the same probleme. I also would like to generate an index-file for press-releases. But at the moment I fail because I don't unterstand the xalan-implementation of teamsite.
I have following configuration:

tpl(in templatedata/marketing/pressrelease/presentation):
<iwov_xslt xsl_file="\/templatedata\marketing\pressrelease\xsl\makeindex.xsl" >
<obconf>
blabla
</obconf>
</iwov_xslt>

makeindex.xsl(in templatedata/marketing/pressrelease/xsl):
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" xmlns:fo="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Format">

<xsl:template match="/">
<html>
<head>
<title>Aktuelle Pressemitteilungen</title>
</head>
<body>
<table>
<xsl:call-template name="readXML">
<xsl:with-param name="count" select="1"/>
<xsl:with-param name="maxprint" select="5"/>
</xsl:call-template>

</table>
</body>
</html>

</xsl:template>

<xsl:template name="readXML">
<xsl Smiley Tongue

aram name="count"/>
<xsl Smiley Tongue

aram name="maxprint"/>
<xsl:if test="$count <= $maxprint">
(0)<xsl:variable name="load1" select="document(concat('templatedata/marketing/pressrelease/data/q',string($count)))" />
(1)<xsl:variable name="load1" select="document(concat('q',string($count)))" />
(2)<xsl:variable name="load1" select="document(concat('http://pj-gamble:82/templatedata/marketing/pressrelease/data/q',string($count)))" />

<xsl:call-template name="manageload1">
<xsl:with-param name="load" select="$load1"/>
</xsl:call-template>

<xsl:call-template name="readXML">
<xsl:with-param name="count" select="$count + 1"/>
<xsl:with-param name="maxprint" select="$maxprint"/>
</xsl:call-template>
</xsl:if>
</xsl:template>

<xsl:template name="manageload1">
<xsl Smiley Tongue

aram name="load"/>
<tr>
<td>
<xsl:value-of select="$load//item[@name='Title']"/>
</td>
</tr>

</xsl:template>

</xsl:stylesheet>

(0)+(1)+(2) I tried out, but none of them worked

While developing in xmlspy everything works fine, but after deploying in teamsite xalan can't find the stored dcr's, which are named qX(x:number).
I don't know why? Is the document function disabled?

any suggestions

sara

How do you pass the dcr string to the included tpl?

I tried to retrieve the string representing the dcr being generated, for use the DCRnode modules in an <iw_perl> or an included tpl.
- I tried to open the file after retrieving the dcrfile name with for example iwpt_get_dcr_name, to be able to pass the string to the new DCRnode element. But the file could not be opened.
- Since the manual suggests not to use $dcr=iwpt_load_dcr (...); because dcr is reserved for the global data content record list, I assumed I could access the value of the root node with $dcr->value('menu'). This result cannot be generated.

Can you help me?