Dec's Dom Blog

Using a HTML5 Canvas to capture a signature on the iPad from XPages

Posted on December 28, 2011 by Declan Sciolla-Lynch

One of the nice things about the ipad is being able to use your finger or a stylus to ‘draw’ your signature in an app and then have it captured. There are some easy to use frameworks to do this in native apps but if you are building XPage application then you can’t use those frameworks unless you plan to create hybrid apps using PhoneGap or Titanium.

However the iPad and other touchscreen devices all use HTML5 compliant browsers and with HTML5 there is a new canvas tag that sets up a drawing area. Using the touch events you can figure out where the persons finger is and then draw on the canvas as they move it around. As the signature is being drawn you can also capture the X Y coordinates used by the canvas and store them in an input field so when the form is submitted you have all the information required to regenerate the signature.

Using these concepts I’ve build an XPages custom control that you can test out here. Once I’ve tidied it up a bit and tested it some more I’ll release it on OpenNTF. This control works on both touchscreen devies and on your desktop machine using your mouse to draw the signature. The large blocks of data you see in the view in the test application is the jsonified array of coordinates used to save the signature.

Enjoy!

Source Control for the Domino Developer at Lotusphere 2012

Posted on December 6, 2011 by Declan Sciolla-Lynch

The Lotusphere abstract notifications were yesterday and I’m pleased to announce that the abstract that I submitted was accepted. It is a great topic that I hope attendees will be interested in.

A new version of fileSendr has been released.

Posted on July 17, 2011 by Declan Sciolla-Lynch 2 Comments

A new version of fileSendr has been released on OpenNTF. It features a new multi-file upload control based on jQuery Uploadify that should resolve a lot of the issues people have had with fileSendr in Internet Explorer in the previous versions.

I’ve also reworked the custom messages that can be sent as part of the notification to the recipients so that they are now using the richtext CKEditor field and if your running the beta of Domino 8.5.3 then you can also use the new oneUI V2.1 styles right from the application configuration.

There have also been lots of bug fixes and tweaks that will make the application more user friendly and additional security checking to hide uploaded files away from people who don’t have the correct urls to the files.

One thing to note is that due to the new upload system the Amazon S3 support has been disabled in this version for the time being.

Access the OpenNTF project here :

Single Copy XPages Design

Posted on June 22, 2011 by Declan Sciolla-Lynch 1 Comment

Introduced in 8.5.2 there is a feature called Single Copy XPages Design ( or SCXD ) that hasn’t really had a lot of press. Not to be confused with Single Copy Template ( SCT ) this is a feature that can save you a lot of disk space and increase XPages performance if you have a lot of XPages application that all use the exact same template.

To get SCXD working correctly you need two versions of your application template. Lets call them SCXD Master Template and SCXD Servent Template. The SCXD Master Template will contain all the Xpages design elements, forms, views, resources, themes, css files etc. The SCXD Servent Template will just contain the forms and views and a single blank XPage so that you can point the database launch properties to something.

The next stage is quite simple. Create a database from the SCXD Master Template. Then in the SCXD Servent Template set the Application XPages properties to enable the SCXD system and point it to the SCXD Master Database that you just created.

Now for each of your XPage application that use the common template you can replace the design with the SCXD Servent Template.

Once you have finished replacing the design of the databases you need to issue a ‘Restart Task HTTP’ so that the XPages processor can start using the new SCXD database.

If you have lots of databases using this single template you get lots of benefits. The first being disk space saving, you don’t have to have all those xpages design elements and resources in multiple databases. Secondly is the XPage renderer only needs to load these design elements and java classes into memory once so you get rid of that small delay that sometimes happens when opening a XPage app for the first time ( this can be made even faster with the XPagesPreLoad option coming in 8.5.3 being pointed to the SCXD Master Database).

I started looking at SCXD because we’re developing a system where there will be a couple of thousand ( about 35,000 ) NSFs all using the same design. By being able to remove the XPage design elements we see an instant disk-space saving of over 90Gb and I’m sure the users won’t be complaining about the performance increase also.

There are more details about SCXD on the Domino Dev Wiki @

Easier deployment of ExtLib ( and other OSGI plugins ) in Domino 8.5.3

Posted on June 15, 2011 by Declan Sciolla-Lynch 8 Comments

Disclaimer :

“This is beta software from IBM and does not represent a commitment, promise or legal obligation by IBM to deliver, in a future release of Notes/Domino or Lotus Notes Traveler, any material, code or functionality described/shown in this presentation.”

————————-

I should repeat the disclaimer on this one as it’s not in the release notes yet so there is no guarantee this will make it into the final released version of Domino 8.5.3 but from what I’ve been told the feature has tested very well.

To make the deployment of OSGi plugins like the Extension Library from OpenNTF easier a couple of updates have been made to the UpdateSite template and a new notes.ini variable has been added to Domino 8.5.3.

Firstly the UpdateSite has a new ‘Sign’ button that will allow you to sign all the documents in the UpdateSite. So if your going to be deploying ExtLib using this method you would create a new UpdateSite database based on the template and then import the UpdateSite from the ExtLib and then sign it. Only updates that have been signed can be deployed using this new method. Lets say we created our updateSite to be called AdminExtLib.nsf

Next you need to add in a new notes.ini variable on the Domino server called OSGI_HTTP_DYNAMIC_BUNDLES and point it to the UpdateSite database. In this case our new notes.ini variable would read OSGI_HTTP_DYNAMIC_BUNDLES=admin/extlib.nsf

Once this is done all you will need to do is issue a ‘Restart Task HTTP’ and when the HTTP task restarts it will tell the OSGI loader to read in the plugins from the database.

if your UpdateSite database isn’t at the correct version then you’ll see an error message during http startup stating that the view $vwOSGiLoader is missing.

If everything has gone successfully then you will see a message saying ‘NSF Based Plugins are being installed in the OSGI runtime’.

One of the nice things about this is that when newer versions of the plugin become available all you need to do is import them into your UpdateSite NSF and then restart the HTTP task.

Another thing that you will notice is that the plugins stay in the NSF and don’t get extracted out to the workspaceapplicationsplugins folder so if you have deployed older versions of ExtLib you can now get rid of all those old files and have a cleaner deployment.

And this isn’t just for ExtLib. You’ll be able to deploy any OSGi plugins to your Domino server this way. if you have heard of GBS Transformer then you may know that they have their own set of XPages Extensions that are deployed via OSGi plugins so they could be deployed using this method.

Fingers crossed that this feature does make it into the Domino 8.5.3 final code. It’s going to be great for admin and developers alike.

Red and Yellow and Pink and Blue

Posted on June 14, 2011 by Declan Sciolla-Lynch 1 Comment

Disclaimer :

————————-

Maybe not all the colors of the rainbow but oneUI has been updated in Domino 8.5.3 to version 2.1 which includes a couple of new colors, yes, including pink.

The new oneUI V2.1 colors are : Blue, Gold, Green, Onyx, Orange, Pink, Purple, Red and Silver

You can use all of these themes in your own applications by pointing the theme name to oneuiv2.1_xxx where xxx is one of the colors above or you can extend your own themes using the same theme name. There is also a oneuiv2.1 theme with no specific colors and a oneuiv2.1_gen1 which I still need to look into.

All of these themes still use Dojo’s Tundra CSS for the Dojo elements and not the newer Claro theme however it probably wouldn’t be too much work to copy the supplied theme files and replace all references of Tundra with Claro if you prefer that look and feel for your dojo widgets.

ALSO…

The Domino 8.5.3 installer code no longer removes any theme files that you may have created yourself in the dominoxspnsfthemes folder. In the past if you created a theme file here and then upgraded your Domino server your theme files would be removed. This fix allows you to create your own company standard theme file that you can then just reference from your XPages applications or you may have some special themes for mobile devices that you can use with the ExtLib Mobile Controls in this folder.

Baked in Source Control Enabler in IBM Domino Designer 8.5.3

Posted on June 13, 2011 by Declan Sciolla-Lynch 1 Comment

Disclaimer :

————————-

Last year IBM released a ‘Technology Preview’ on OpenNTF for Source Control enablement of Domino Designer. This plugin worked on Domino Designer 8.5.2 and the good news is that the current beta of 8.5.3 has the plugin baked right into the code.

Source control is a very hot topic when it comes to Domino Designer. It was shown off at Lotusphere to great applause.

The plugin itself does not do the source control. All it does is help you create a flat-file / on-disk version of an NSF and keep it in sync. when you change a design element in Domino Designer it is synced out to the on-disk version and if a change is made to the on-disk version it is synced into the NSF.

You then need to install a source control plugin into your Domino Designer, this can be a simpler client-server style source control system like SVN or a distributed style one like Mercurial or GIT. They all have advantages and disadvantages. Personally I’ve been using Mercurial and I’m also running a RedMine server for issue tracking that works great against my Mercurial repositories.

A little bird whispered in my ear that there MAY be a NoteIn9 video about source control, mercurial and RedMine coming out soon…

XPages and HTML5 gets easier in IBM Notes/Domino 8.5.3

Posted on June 13, 2011 by Declan Sciolla-Lynch

Disclaimer :

———————-

The embargo on talking about the upcoming IBM Notes/Domino 8.5.3 release has been lifted and a couple of others have already blogged about some of the new features like the JS/CSS Aggregator or the new Java design Element but I wanted to mention a small feature that’s going to make life easier for anybody working on HTML 5

First of all the application properties page now has an option to allow you to select the HTML DocType for all the pages generated by your application. One of the options listed here is HTML 5.

Next there is a new property type that has been added to a number of controls called ‘Attribs’. Currently you can find them in the all properties section of the control. The idea behind this is to allow you to add additional attributes that will be rendered to the browser which will allow you to add html 5 attributes to your controls. So if you want to add the ‘Placeholder’ you can add the following to your inputText control :

&lt;xp:this.attrs&gt;
 &lt;xp:attr name="placeholder" value="This is the placeholder text"&gt;&lt;/xp:attr&gt;
 &lt;/xp:this.attrs&gt;

These two new features alone will make working with HTML5 in XPages much easier.

Setting Up A Source Control Server with Domino LDAP : Part 7

Posted on February 20, 2011 by Declan Sciolla-Lynch 1 Comment

By now you have your Mercurial Source Control server up and running, If you go to http://yourserver/admin and log in you should be able to create a new repository. Go ahead and create a test repository and then load up Domino Designer.

Before you can use Source Control in Domino Designer you will need to make sure that you have installed the Source Control Enablement Plugin for Domino Designer V8.5.2. ( if you are on the 8.5.3 Managed Beta this plugin is already installed for you however as it is a beta this capability may not be present in the final 8.5.3 release. The Source Control abilities in 8.5.3 were announced at Lotusphere 2011 with the same disclaimer.). Download the plugin and install it as per the instructions on the OpenNTF website.

The Source Control Enablement Plugin is only half of the solution, all it does is convert the .NSF file into an on-disk project that can be seen by your Eclipse source control system. Once you have installed this plugin you still need to install your Source Control plugin. As we are running a Mercurial Source Control server we’ll need a Mercurial Source Control plugin. Here I recommend MercurialEclipse which is easy to install. Just click on the File – Application – Install menu option in Domino Designer and select the option to search for new features to install. Then in the next dialog box create a new Update Site that points to http://cbes.javaforge.com/update and then click next. Select the new features and install them and restart Domino Designer when prompted. You now have Domino Designer setup for Source Control, in the next section I’ll show you how to link an NSF to your Mercurial server.

As a side note, you can install multiple Source Control solutions in your Domino Designer client, so if you need Mercurial Source Control for one project but need SVN Source Control for another project then this is no problem, you just need to install both Eclipse plugins.

Setting Up A Source Control Server with Domino LDAP : Part 6

Posted on February 20, 2011 by Declan Sciolla-Lynch

So now we need to configure phphgadmin so it will work with our Mercurial server. lets start by editing the configuration file.

sudo vi /var/www/admin/application/config/phphgadmin.php

There are quite a few edits that we need to do to this file to get everything working. First we need to set the base URL so find the line starting $config['base_url'] and set the value to something like

$config['base_url'] = “http://yourserver/admin/”

When you create a new repository your can have a number of default values preset by changing the following lines. I suggest setting allowpull to ‘true’ to allow people to clone the repositories and push_ssl to false to allow contributors to push changes to the repository over http. the allow_read should be set to * to allow anybody, including anonymous, to clone the repository and the allow_push can either be * to allow all authenticated users push changes back up to the repository or you can put in usernames to restrict it to specific people.

$config['default_hgrc']['general']['paths']['default'] = ‘%1$s%2$s’;

$config['default_hgrc']['general']['web']['allow_archive'] = ”;

$config['default_hgrc']['general']['web']['allow_push'] = ‘*’;

$config['default_hgrc']['general']['web']['allowpull'] = ‘true’;

$config['default_hgrc']['general']['web']['allow_read'] = ‘*’;

$config['default_hgrc']['general']['web']['contact'] = ‘your@email.address’;

$config['default_hgrc']['general']['web']['description'] = ”;

$config['default_hgrc']['general']['web']['name'] = ‘%2$s’;

$config['default_hgrc']['general']['web']['push_ssl'] = ‘false’;

$config['default_hgrc']['general']['web']['style'] = ‘monoblue’;

Next scroll down through the file till you find the lines starting with $config['profile']['default'] and edit the lines to read as follows, making sure to change the url to your servers url.

$config['profile']['default']['ini'] = ‘/var/hg/hgweb.config’;
$config['profile']['default']['default_repo_dir'] = ‘/var/hg/repos/’;
$config['profile']['default']['hgserve_url'] = ‘http://yourserver/hg/’;
$config['profile']['default']['default_hgrc'] = $config['default_hgrc']['general'];

You should also delete the 4 lines that start with $config['profile']['test'] as we don’t need them.

Save the file and then perform the following commands to enable the Apache Rewrite module and restart the apache server. You also need to give special permissions to a lock directory for phphgadmin.

sudo chown www-data:www-data /var/www/admin/lock
sudo a2enmod rewrite
sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

You should now be able to go to http://yourserver/admin and be able to create new Mercurial repositories.