Help in Designing Application Architecture

Kanika Sukhija

I use webreports to render HTML pages.

I would like to create a complete framework which includes

React as UI framework,

Jasmine as Unit Test Tool

Karma as Testing Runner

Grunt as Task Runner.

Is it possible in the content server?

What are the other ways of hosting an HTML page in Content Server?

As part of the requirement, i have created custom database tables .I won't be able to leverage Rest API to access data from custom tables as RestAPI only supports core tables.

Please suggest a suitable way so that I can design an application architecture which satisfies all the above norms.

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Ian_Whitfield

Hi Kanika,

Content Server doesn't currently ship with NodeJS which I believe is a requirement for using components like Karma and Grunt so the build environment would need to be separate from Content Server.

What you are describing sounds very similar in architecture to the Smart UI. In the case of the Smart UI the build environment is contained within the SDK here: https://knowledge.opentext.com/knowledge/llisapi.dll?func=ll&objId=65414087&objAction=browse&sort=name. Have you considered building your customisation using the Smart UI SDK as there is already a framework set up to build and deploy the application for you and you'll have access to all the pre-written reusable components.

If you want to deploy your own application using React then you can either:

a) Deploy this using an oscript request handler and write a simple launch page in weblingo to launch your application. This is how the Smart UI is deployed when you launch it via /app.

b) Deploy this using WebReports as a CS Application. You can create a simple WebReport launch page to load your application. CS Applications are documented here: https://knowledge.opentext.com/knowledge/piroot/llescor/v160200/llescor-h-agd/en/html/lleswebr-h-agd-csapps-adminhelp-appmge.htm. These enable you to package WebReports, data sources and any html/js/css support files and install and upgrade them as a deployed application in a similar way to Content Server modules.

In terms of accessing custom data for your application. You could create your own custom Rest API in oscript as per the following document: https://developer.opentext.com/webaccess/#url=%2Fawd%2Fresources%2Farticles%2F6102%2Fcontent%2Bserver%2Brest%2Bapi%2B%2Bquick%2Bstart%2Bguide&tab=501 . Alternatively you could take a look at the WebReports Rest API here: https://developer.opentext.com/webaccess/#url=%2Fawd%2Fresources%2Fapis%2Fcontent-server-v2%23!%2Fwebreports&tab=501.

Regards
Ian

Kanika Sukhija

Thanks a lot for swift and accurate reply, Ian.

So I can create webreports to access data from custom tables and leverage webreport RestAPI to use it in my node application.

Will Content Server ever be shipped with NodeJs in Future ?

Ian_Whitfield

I don't believe there are any concrete plans to put NodeJS into the Content Server installer at the moment. It's something that might change in future though.

Do you need to have custom CS tables for the data or can you use form node SQL tables? If so you can read and write to these tables using the WebReports form source and destination. For info, if you're on 16.2, not all of the WebReports APIs are currently documented on developer.opentext.com. They have been officially released but I believe the documentation is waiting to be updated on the site. If you are looking at using this approach and need any pointers feel free to post in the WebReports forum here: https://knowledge.opentext.com/knowledge/cs.dll?func=ll&objId=3684835&objAction=view

Regards
Ian

Kanika Sukhija

Hi Ian

So if I follow this approach it has to pass through 4 different layers before it gives me the actual result.

Javascript RestAPI - > Web Reports ->LiveReport -> Stored Procedure ->Custom Tables.

Will it make the response slower by any chance ?

Ian_Whitfield

That is a fairly standard configuration. I guess the question is: slower than what? There will be some additional overhead when processing the WebReport and LiveReport so it may be a bit slower than writing a custom oscript Rest API that calls the stored procedure directly. I've not found it to be that significant. It's probably best to try it out to see what kind of performance you get.

Regards
Ian