Basic Search And Discovery

[Dan Wellisch]

Hello:

I want to do something fairly standard, I hope.  I am completely new to DotCMS, but I would like to get to my needs fairly simply.  

My client has stored info. in DotCMS as the backend for a specific application.  This backend is indeed what I want to use for another application.  Before utilizing this same backend for the new application (using REST API calls, as assumed to be the best way to do this from a separate Java application?), I want to be able to, using the DOTCMS GUI, which I have access to, search and find a specific URL to an external application, Excel spreadsheet (artifact), and a specific code snippet.  So, the question is what areas in DOTCMS can I use to store this information and easily find it:

1) First using the DOTCMS GUI so I can demonstrate to my client that DOTCMS will actually serve our purpose in this regard.

2) And then whether the REST API call from the Java app is the best way to do this or is there another better way like Velocity, etc.  Flexibility and future proofing for changes needs consideration.

Thank you,

Dan

[Dean Gonzalez]

Hi Dan,

Yes this is a good approach.  When a new client is looking for a Proof of Concept like this I normally create a theme that looks like the client's current site: https://dotcms.com/courses/videos/building-design-template-themes-5-x/5 then I create a custom content type or two and a few templates and pages to illustrate how to build custom content, a few templates and containers (for content formatting), a widget or two, listing and detail page, etc.  Once this is done, then I go to a page and hit the page api button and show how the entire page layout API can be used by an external app to allow dynamic editing of layouts that the app will dynamically handle, and I also go to the content tab, search for some custom content, and then hit the down arrow to the right of the search button and show the API calls for content listings out of the box.  Then I also show that if a client needs a custom api call to limit field returns or do complicated queries, nested queries in a single call, how they can use the Scripting API which is very lightweight and easy to create: https://dotcms.com/docs/latest/scripting-api

Hope that helps. 

[jonathan...@dotcms.com]

Hi Dan,

DotCMS has a lot of functionality available on rest, take a look to this:

https://dotcms.com/docs/latest/web-apis

As Dean mentioned, you can create your own rest apis by using the scripting-api, if it is not enough by some reason you can create your own endpoints by using Java.

Let us know if you have more question or doubts,

Best
J