Short URLs for Alfresco Share

This example is based in a previous work related to how to create a simple URL shortener for Alfresco Share.

https://gist.github.com/agea/2779867

The original code shows instructions for enabling the component:

• deploying dynamically a simple content model which defines a custom aspect and a custom property
• creating a content rule for executing some javascript code for enabling the defined shortable aspect
• an additional Apache rewrite rule is necessary for the URL shortener.

I used this example in an Alfresco training to show different concepts such as content models and custom aspects, search and indexing, content rules and finally to introduce Alfresco Javascript API. In the next, we discuss a revision of the example adding:

• A bootstrap configuration for dwModel.xml including i18n properties
• A basic share form configuration
• A simple JS action for creating short URLs with the help of content rules
• A JS behaviour for generating a short URL when adding dw:shortable aspect
• A custom metadata template for documents with dw:shortable aspect applied
• A custom indicator for documents with dw:shortable aspect applied

and other useful concepts such as bootstrap (i18n) content models, actions, behaviours, metadata templates, evaluators and indicators.

Using

Once applied aspect in Alfresco Share, for searching, just type @dw:shorturl:"OamhPP" in Alfresco search box or use the next url:

http://locahost:8080/share/page/search?t=dw:shorturl:OamhPP

Packaging

Just generate maven packages. Go into the directory that you unzipped, or cloned via git:

$ git clone https://github.com/zylklab/zk-url-shortener
$ cd zk-url-shortener
$ cd zk-url-shortener-repo
$ mvn clean && mvn package -DskipTests=true
$ cd ..
$ cd zk-url-shortener-share
$ mvn clean && mvn package -DskipTests=true

The generated AMPs are located in corresponding target directories.

Installing

• Just copy the corresponding AMP into $ALF_HOME/amps and $ALF_HOME/amps_share, stop Alfresco service, apply AMPs script ($ALF_HOME/bin/apply_amps.sh) and start Alfresco service.

Apache reverse proxy config and rewrite urls

For using really short urls you need Apache in your config (for example, /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default.conf):

# Rewrite config for short urls
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^/s/(.*)$ /share/page/search?t=dw:shorturl:$1 [R]

# Reverse proxy config 
RewriteRule ^/$ share [R]
ProxyPass /alfresco         ajp://localhost:8009/alfresco 
ProxyPassReverse /alfresco  ajp://localhost:8009/alfresco
ProxyPass /share            ajp://localhost:8009/share 
ProxyPassReverse /share     ajp://localhost:8009/share

For using urls like http://locahost/s/OamhPP

The previous config is enabled with the usual sudoer commands (in Ubuntu or Debian) :

sudo a2enmod rewrite
sudo a2enmod proxy
sudo a2enmod proxy_ajp
sudo service apache2 restart

Contributors

• Cesar Capillas
• Mikel Asla

Tested

It should work in Alfresco 4.x and 5.x and Apache 2.2