Important note

This project is now hosted on github. We have explained the Whys and Whatfors in this post : http://share.ez.no/blogs/ez/ez-extensions-now-on-github-waiting-for-your-commits. You can now find the sources of this project here : http://github.com/ezsystems/ezxmlinstaller. Contribution is even more encouraged now relying on github’s collaborative development features. Feel free to fork, hack, and channel the changes back through a pull request. All of this is properly described in the post above.

Waiting for your commits !

Description

The eZ XML Installer extension is a platform to define processes for eZ Publish and execute them.
Processes will be defined in XML. Each action is bundled to a handler which will process this action.

Introduction

The XML can be provided as completed XML or as eZ Publish Template.
This template can contain a set of variables which will the user be ask for before the processes will be executed.
The XML is a set of actions. Each action is bundled to a handler which will process this action.
The set of handlers can be extended by custom handers.

Handler

Th following handler are implemented

• ezaddlocation
  Add a new location of an object
• ezassignroles
  Assign a role to a user/group with or without limitations
• ezcreateclass
  Create a new class
• ezcreatecontent
  Create various content
• ezcreaterole
  Create roles
• ezcreatesection
  Create sections
• ezcreateworkflow
  Create workflows and assign workflows to trigger
• ezhideunhide
  Hide/Show content
• ezmodifycontent
  Modify existing content
• ezproccessinformation
  Display information texts during processing
• ezsendemail
  Send an email
• ezsetsettings
  Modify settings

Features

The extension is a set of some possibilities to use the XML processing.

Process by module

The frontend interface is planned, but not implemented yet.

Process by workflow

This is currently very limited. A datatype is shipped with this extension which will parse a given template (defined in class) for a list of features. While creating/editing an object this features can be selected via checkbox. The workflow will now install/uninstall selected features.

It is planned to make this more flexible and to have the possibility to define various information via the datatype and forward these information to the template where some logic can be implemented.

Process by console

One way to use the XML processor is to use the console tool. A template will be provided via argument. All needed information are requested. After that the template will be parsed and processed.

Example XML

<?xml version = '1.0' encoding = 'UTF-8'?>
<eZXMLImporter>
  <ProccessInformation comment="Creating section" />
  <CreateSection sectionName="Test Section" navigationPart="ezcontentnavigationpart" referenceID="SECTION_XY" />
  <ProccessInformation comment="Creating role" />
  <CreateRole>
    <Role name="Custom Role" createRole="true" referenceID="MY_ROLE" replacePolicies="true">
      <Policy module="content" function="read">
        <Limitations>
          <Section>internal:SECTION_XY</Section>
        </Limitations>
      </Policy>
    </Role>
  </CreateRole>
  <ProccessInformation comment="Create new user group" />
  <CreateContent parentNode="5">
    <ContentObject owner="14" creator="14" contentClass="user_group" section="3" remoteID="my_new_group">
      <Attributes>
        <name>New member</name>
        <description>All new member</description>
        <website_toolbar_access>0</website_toolbar_access>
      </Attributes>
      <SetReference attribute="object_id" value="NEW_MEMBER_GROUP" />
     </ContentObject>
   </CreateContent>
  <ProccessInformation comment="Assigning roles to user groups" />
  <AssignRoles>
    <RoleAssignment roleID="internal:MY_ROLE"  assignTo="internal:NEW_MEMBER_GROUP" />
  </AssignRoles>
</eZXMLImporter>

In this example a new section will be created. Then a new role which allows user to read content of the new section. After that a new user group will be created. Last step is to assign the new role to the new group.