Building a Standalone App or on top of adva_cms?

[Rafael Schaer { beYou media }]

Hi everybody,

since adva_cms is very promising for us in some features, I have to
checkout, if we are going to develop an app on top of it, or not.

I looked around but I didn't find a documentation deep enough yet, may
be somebody could help me out with some explanations, we really would
like to contribute to this cms, but we could need some kickstart help
here :-)

What they actually want is normal contents, a blog, wiki, community
driven forum ... on and on...
so that's why we are thinking about choosing a CMS instead of
creating all on our own.


1) We looked for a way, how to build several site templates

2) We looked for a way, how to build several content templates

3) How to build navigations with "current" / "active" states within.

4) Is there any Explanation of the Auth / Roles Api
=> we have to create roles where users / groups can only manage
their own records e.g.

5) could an standalone coexist with the browsercms as well

Actually, we would like to build a more or less complex app for event
subscribing in a company.
As an organizer/ moderator you can choose event topics and build an
event.
Once prepared an even, one can invite company employees.
only the organisator or company moderator can manage the events and
its participants.
Automaticly sent invitations,... with the recieved invitation, others
can participate, the moderator can view its status, pending
invitations, resend the invitation and so on....
you see... pretty complex.



Thank you very much for your help!


best regards

[Clemens Kofler]

Hi Rafael,

> 1) We looked for a way, how to  build several site templates

You can develop templates as part of a theme which - at the moment -
you can find in the site settings (menu item "Settings"). You then
create a new theme where you override the default theme by naming the
templates like the templates in the adva-cms default template. So,
say, if you want to override the partial sections/_article.html.erb,
you'd have to create a template file with this very filename
("sections/_article.html.erb") in your theme and use it the way you
see fit.

Finally, just activate the template and you should be good to go.

> 2) We looked for a way, how to  build several content templates

If you need different content templates, you can define additional
templates in the theme and then select the fitting template in the
section settings, i.e. you can define use custom content template per
section.

> 3) How to build navigations with "current" / "active" states within.

I don't think we have that right now - at least not in the old layout.
However, you can code the basic logic yourself and just override the
partial that builds the navigation.

> 4) Is there any Explanation of the Auth / Roles Api
>     => we have to create roles where users / groups can only manage
> their own records e.g.

We're working on making the RBAC fully functional (right now, it
doesn't do everything we need it to do). If you have some opinions on
what it should look like, feel free to list your requirements and any
hints - it's definitely appreciated!

> 5) could an standalone coexist with the browsercms as well

Yes, definitely - from our perspective, this is the main purpose of
adva-cms! We've already built two applications on top of adva-cms
which run smoothly. The only caveats are that you have be careful
about naming your models, controllers and views (we don't have
namespacing for them right now). But basically, you can run a
standalone app on top of adva-cms and - if you need it - even override
some of adva-cms functionality to fit your needs (e.g. by extending
existing model classes in initializers).

I hope this answers your questions sufficiently. If not or if you have
further questions, please don't hesitate to ask here. Alternatively,
you can always drop by in our IRC channel #adva-cms on
irc.freenode.net.
- Clemens

[Barry Kukkuk]

On Mon, Apr 20, 2009 at 12:59 PM, Clemens Kofler <cle...@railway.at> wrote:

Yes, definitely - from our perspective, this is the main purpose of
adva-cms! We've already built two applications on top of adva-cms
which run smoothly

Is it possible to give us URLs for these apps? I am also very interested in building an application on top of adva-cms.

--
Barry Kukkuk
www.btgtech.co.za - You Photoshop, we Database

[Clemens Kofler]

One is only internal at the moment, the other one was for a customer
and isn't launched yet.

In any case, neither of them is open source so we can't really show
you the code. If I find the time over the next few days, I might be
able to write a blog post containing some info. In the meantime you
could check Ryan's Railscast about Rails Engines which should give you
a basic insight on the whole topic since adva-cms uses the same
approach.

On Apr 20, 1:38 pm, Barry Kukkuk <kuk...@gmail.com> wrote:

[Sven Fuchs]

On 20.04.2009, at 12:59, Clemens Kofler wrote:
>> 3) How to build navigations with "current" / "active" states within.
> I don't think we have that right now - at least not in the old layout.
> However, you can code the basic logic yourself and just override the
> partial that builds the navigation.

Also, the next release will ship a Menu class that will be used in the
backend. This class should make it easy to have menus highlighting
their current/active item. I guess we'll "officially" adapt that for
the frontend, too, as soon as we get to rework the defaul frontend
theme.

>> 5) could an standalone coexist with the browsercms as well
> Yes, definitely - from our perspective, this is the main purpose of
> adva-cms!

Just in case by "browsercms" Rafael meant the Rails CMS with the same
name ... I'd bet there would be name clashes. Also, it probably
wouldn't really integrate seamlessly.

[Sven Fuchs]

Just fyi, we're going to migrate adva-cms.org soon and plan to add a "sites using adva-cms" section to the wiki.

[Rafael Schaer { beYou media }]

First of all, thank you for all the replies!
I am looking forward, how it will evolve.
I am very sorry... as I was evaluation browsercms as well, I made a
mistake and I mixed up the names in the last question, what a shame :-
o

5) could an standalone coexist with the '''adva-cms''' as well
Actually I meant ADVA CMS. :-)

As we want to have an app, with a sophisticated roles system, we
wonder, if for example, we could hook into the rights/roles management
system of adva,
as we have actually evaluated authlogic / padlock for the
authentication system.
But adva crossed our way and we are hesitating, looking if we should
develop in/ for adva, as we may could provide other contribution to
the adva as well.

But what is missing right now is a good documentation / api /
interface, on which we at least can plan on, not that we will stuck
someday.

[Clemens Kofler]

> 5) could an standalone coexist with the '''adva-cms''' as well
> Actually I meant ADVA CMS. :-)

Then you can refer to my statement: This is not only possible but it's
the real intention behind adva-cms! We now tend to see it more as an
application platform rather than just a CMS.

> As we want to have an app, with a sophisticated roles system, we
> wonder, if for example, we could hook into the rights/roles management
> system of adva, as we have actually evaluated authlogic / padlock for the
> authentication system.

Right now, this will most likely not work. We are working hard to
abstract the whole role-based access control system and make it more
manageable (on the frontend and in the code). However, we've been
thinking about writing an API so people can hook in authorization
backends (such as authlogic, padlock etc) that then interact with adva-
cms via the RBAC engine. No definitive decisions yet, though.

> But what is missing right now is a good documentation / api /
> interface, on which we at least can plan on, not that we will stuck
> someday.

The implementation of the new interface is being finalized as I'm
writing this message. You can already see it in the master branch and
after a few more bugfixes and tests we will announce the next official
release.

Regarding documentation: That's really high on our agenda as more and
more people start test-driving adva-cms and ask for documentation
(both, end-user and developer documentation). As with everything,
we're open for suggestions how to tackle this huge task.

API: What exactly do you mean by API? What API(s) should adva-cms (or
a CMS in general) provide?

- Clemens

[JDS]

I think I'll ask a question in this thread since it relates to
building an application on top of or alongside Adva.

Most of our site will be managed by the CMS aspect of Adva, but one
part, which uses REST to link to a legacy application is extra. Now
that
I've started coding that side of things the first thing I need to know
is how can I create a section which will then appear in a menu and
directs the user to the controller that will be handling all the REST
integration. In essence I want a section type "custom controller", how
can I get this without having to hard code a link to the controller in
my *.erb files?

Thanks

John Small