Chapter 1 starts out by describing a sample site that will be created to demonstrate OpenCms development concepts. It also provides a description of the developer skills required for OpenCms development, followed by a basic overview of OpenCms architecture. We also provide a basic description of OpenCms configuration files and their file locations.

Chapter 2 sets the stage for coding by providing details on how to set up various OpenCms development environments. The chapter includes a step-by-step procedure for using Eclipse to check out and build OpenCms from the CVS repository. The chapter describes how to build OpenCms using Ant and also how to debug OpenCms itself.

Chapter 3 begins with an explanation of OpenCms modules, including a guide for creating a new module. The module is used to define a new content type, which is another concept covered in the chapter. Included in the content type discussion is a complete, step-by-step guide for designing and creating a new content type used to contain blog entries. All aspects of content type schema files are covered, including schema design, widget usage, field selectors, field validations, nested definitions, and registration. At the end of the chapter, the content type may be used to create new blog entries.

Chapter 4 continues developing the sample site by covering JSP template coding. A set of templates is created to display the blog content, including a complete run through of how they are put together. The example illustrates the use of custom template coding beyond the standard OpenCms tag library by sub-classing Java template classes. Included in the chapter is an overview of the resource and template loading mechanism. Also relating to templates is a description of using expressions and JSTL within template code. Lastly in the chapter is a guide to using WebDAV for template editing in Eclipse.

Chapter 5 covers the usage of Lucene within OpenCms, beginning with an overview of basic Lucene concepts. This is followed by an in-depth guide to creating a search index in OpenCms. The guide provides an example of building a new search index for the blog site example and describes a developer tool, which may be used to perform test queries against the index. The chapter includes a walkthrough of implementing a search form in OpenCms for simple cases and for more advanced situations.

Chapter 6 continues the build out of the sample site by adding support for users and commenting. It starts with an explanation of OpenCms security, including a discussion on Roles, Groups, Users, and Organizational Units. It then proceeds with the set up of the group and role structure for the sample, and shows how they are used within the code.

Chapter 7 shows how easy it is to support user customizations of site pages. It then show an example of this by adding RSS feed support to the sample site, allowing users to specify a custom feed. Included in the chapter is a discussion of integrating third-party libraries into OpenCms.

Chapter 8 describes the custom widget interface, and then shows how to design and create a widget. The widget provides a pluggable data interface that is used to obtain a list of selection values for a select list. The chapter then illustrates how to read XML content fields by creating a list source that gets its values from any content field. Finally, the chapter shows how to localize message strings and how to register and use the custom widget.

Chapter 9 shows how RSS feeds can be generated from OpenCms content. It also shows how wrapper classes can be used around structured content items to make them easier to work with, and then walks through creation of an RSS feed generation module using these concepts.

Chapter 10 discusses how administration points are created in OpenCms, and also how to use OpenCms dialog classes. The chapter also discusses how widgets can be used programmatically. An example administration point is created that ties together topics from previous chapters, showing how to use widgets, dialogs, and multiple screens.

Tools needed and used for this book:

In this book, you will find a number of styles of text that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles and an explanation of their meaning.

There are three styles for code. Code words in text are shown as follows: "We can include other contexts through the use of the include directive."

A block of code will be set as follows:

<jsp:useBean id="search" scope="request" class="org.opencms.search.CmsSearch">
    <jsp:setProperty name="search" property="*"/>
    <% search.init(cms.getCmsObject()); %>
       </jsp:useBean>

When we wish to draw your attention to a particular part of a code block, the relevant lines or items will be made bold:

<mappings>
           <mapping suffix=".jsp" />
           <mapping suffix=".html" /> (add this line)
           <mapping suffix=".htm" /> (add this line)
</mappings>

Any command-line input and output is written as follows:

>ant –propertyfile opencms.properties [target]

New terms and important words are introduced in a bold-type font. Words that you see on the screen, in menus or dialog boxes for example, appear in our text like this: "clicking the Next button moves you to the next screen".

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