Introduction to Alfresco mobile SDKs

1. Alfresco Mobile SDKs
Agenda
• Overview – Why, What & How?
– Gavin Cornwell
• Android SDK
– Jean Marie Pascal
• iOS SDK
– Peter Schmidt

2. Overview – Why?
• Simplify Access To Alfresco From Mobile
Devices
• Uniform API To Access On-Premise
Servers and The Cloud
• Enable 3rd party App Integration
• Rapidly Build Alfresco Based Apps
• Used For All Future Alfresco Apps

3. Overview – What?

4. Overview – Sample App

5. Overview – How?

6. Overview – How?

7. Overview – How?
• Create Session
• Use Services
• Retrieve Model Objects
• Handles Asynchronous Calls For You

8. Android SDK

9. In Android world…
• A common Android Application is made of
– Activities
• provides a screen with which users can
interact in order to do something
– Fragments (Available in android 3+)
• represents a behavior or a portion of user
interface
– Loaders (Available in android 3+)
• make it easy to asynchronously load data
in an activity or fragment
– Services
• request information remotely to content
repository and are responsible for
creating data objects.

10. What Alfresco Mobile - Android
SDK provides…
• Synchronous Alfresco Services API
– High level services + objects
• Asynchronous API
– Loaders
• UI Component Library
– Fragments, Adapter and manager
• Sample application
– Demonstrate how to use components

11. It’s not just one project…
Alfresco OpenCMIS Extension
Alfresco Mobile Repository API
Alfresco Mobile Async API
Alfresco Mobile UI Components
Alfresco Applications (sample…)
APK
LIB
APK
Android OpenCMISJAR
JAR
JAR
JAR
Works on
Android versions
superior to 2.1
Works on
Android version
superior to 3.0
Dependency

12. Support is possible…
Alfresco OpenCMIS Extension
Alfresco Mobile Repository API
Alfresco Mobile Async API
Alfresco Mobile UI Components
Alfresco Applications (sample…)
APK
LIB
APK
Android OpenCMISJAR
JAR
JAR
JAR
Works on
Android versions
superior to 2.1
Android support
libraryJAR
Dependency
Not provided

13. UI Library
• Provides
– Images Ressources
• file type icon, logo…
– Themes
• Color scheme, Layout template…
– Localization Resources
– Fragments and adapters
• Activities List,
• Folder list,
• Comments List…

14. Demo Time

15. Use cases
• Create an application from scratch
– Extends and customize the sample application
• Add Alfresco oriented screen to an existing
application
– Use the ApkLib UI component and add a fragment
(Android 3+)
• Just need data
– Use the repository API

16. So are you ready to level up ?

17. Alfresco Mobile SDK

18. What’s included ?
Sample App
Mobile API Library
Included Objective CMIS
library
Documentation
(appledoc docset)

19. What are the libraries ?
Alfresco Mobile API
(+headers)
• Asynchronous handling of
requests
• E.g. download/upload
documents
• Additional Services, e.g.
• Comments
• Tagging
• Rating
• Activity
• Encapsulates low level CMIS
calls
Objective CMIS Library
(+headers)
• Low level library to handle CMIS
sessions, requests & services
• Provides CMIS standard services,
e.g.
• Document/Folder (e.g.
upload/create/download)
• Versioning
• Search
• Mostly synchronous request
• Collaborative project
• Planned to add to Apache CMIS
project

20. iOS Specifics
• Naming conventions
– Objective CMIS code prefixed with CMIS
– Mobile API code prefixed with Alfresco
• Error Handling
– No exceptions in iOS apps, use NSError instead
• As per Apple standard:
– NSError object remains nil if method call is successful. Always check!
• ARC (Automatic Reference Counting)*
– No more retain, release, autorelease on objects
• Blocks
– Used extensively in Mobile API to handle asynchronous requests and callbacks
* requires iOS 5.x or later for full support
^(<parameter list>){ execution code }

21. iOS SDK – Async Handling
Repository
If(nil == error)
{
self.session = session;
}
else
{
UIAlertView *alert =
[[UIAlertView. Alloc]
………..
}
Alfresco
Mobile API
CMIS/REST
API
Background
thread
Main
thread
In Sample
App code

22. How do Objective C Blocks fit in?
• Blocks were introduced in iOS 4, Mac OSX 10.6
• Ad hoc functionality that can be passed on like
parameters
• Mobile API uses blocks as callbacks once requests
complete
– You define what your app/code needs to do within a
block

23. Example – Create Session
NSURL *url = [NSURL URLWithString:host];
[AlfrescoRepositorySession connectWithUrl:url
username:username
password:pwd settings:nil
completionBlock:^(id<AlfrescoSession> session, NSError *error){
if (nil != error)
{
/*
Your error handling code goes here
*/
}
else
{
self.session = session;
NSLog(@"Authenticated successfully.");
}
}];

24. iOS Sample App Demo

25. Thank You!