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Custom ViewsIntroductionCustom Views are template based sub-sites packaged in a ZIP archive that can be moved between different installations of rap-X. More background infomation is available here. To add or remove a Custom View, go to Manage->Settings->List Custom Views. To edit the custom view templates look in the rapx/web/WEB-INF/customviews/ directory. A View is a mini-website that shows a particular slice of Request data. It can be customised by editing simple templates to reflect any page or site design. A View can be accessed by non logged-in users, but only after the supplier has defined an "Anonymous User". Custom Views are usually accessible from the path /public/$viewName ,where $viewName is the name of the specific view. For example: http://support.rap-x.com/public/faq/ is the URL for the rap-X FAQ Custom View. There are 5 steps involved in creating a new custom view
Custom Views LibraryA library of pre-packaged custom views is available at http://library.rap-x.com. Views can be browsed and downloaded for immediate use in your own rap-X installation, or for further customisation. You are welcome to upload new views to this location for use by other users. Defining the Anonymous User When non-authenticated users visit a rap-X View (e.g. FAQ or Forum), the system
uses a default user account to determine their permissions, thus controlling
what data is made available to them. This user account must be defined before
hand.
Changing the Look and Feel of CustomView pagesrap-X Views have been designed to make it as easy as possible to customise the pages that end users will see. The view pages can be edited by going to the rap-X/WEB-INF/forum/templates directory within the location where rap-X was installed on your file system. These templates can be edited by anyone familiar with HTML. The templates use a technology called "Velocity". More details about using Velocity can be found here: http://jakarta.apache.org/velocity/user-guide.html Velocity templates in rap-X are HTML pages which include elements of dynamic, database derived data. rap-X provides each template with access to data variables, which are referenced by words beginning with a $ symbol. Examples of data variables are:
Within each data variable are data fields, which can accessed by the notation $variable.field, e.g.
Browse a full listing of data references available to custom views. Anatomy of a CustomViewA CustomView consists of simply a set of view templates and an XML configuration file. The structure is as follows:
/ - System Administrator's configuration filesThese files use Spring Framework's xml format for Java Bean (object) configuration. This format is described in detail on the Spring Framework website, but you should not need to get too involved with this backgound information - the files are easy to edit and quite self-explanatory. In the root, / , directory, there are two files:
config.xml The following tags can be edited in this file:
Example config.xml file
<beans>
<bean id="config" class="com.rap_x.customviews.Configuration" singleton="true">
<property name="showCategoriesTree"><value>true</value></property>
<property name="categoryType">
<description> category types: 0-filter, 1-container </description>
<value>0</value>
</property>
<property name="showOrgRequestsOnly">
<value>false</value>
</property>
<property name="newReqDiscussion">
<value>true</value>
</property>
<property name="newReqFAQ">
<value>false</value>
</property>
<property name="newReqPrivate">
<value>false</value>
</property>
</bean>
<bean id="velocityConfig"
class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.velocity.VelocityConfigurer"
singleton="true">
<property name="resourceLoaderPath">
<value>/WEB-INF/customviews/forum/templates/</value></property>
</bean>
<bean id="viewResolver"
class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.XmlViewResolver">
<property name="cache"><value>false</value></property>
<property name=
"location"><value>/WEB-INF/customviews/forum/views.xml</value></property>
</bean>
</beans>
views.xml This is another Spring Framework bean configuration file: <bean id="requestList" class="com.rap_x.web.EscapingVelocityView"> <property name="url"><value>requestList.vm</value></property> </bean> Its purpose is to define which physical template files to use for each view.
If you edit anything other than the filename (in italics), something will probably
go horribly wrong. /settings - User Administrator configuration filesThis directory contains the view-specific files which can be edited by Administrator users (Supplier users) through the web interface (using the "Configure" link). These settings define default values for new requests added through a CustomView web interface. The settings are stored in an xml file, an example of which is provided with each custom view (sample-settings.xml). The following options can be configured:
/templatesThis is the directory in which template files are stored. Editing Custom View Templatesrap-X Views have been designed to make it as easy as possible to customise the pages that end users will see. The view pages can be edited by going to the rap-X/WEB-INF/forum/templates directory within the location where rap-X was installed on your file system. These templates can be edited by anyone familiar with HTML. The templates use a technology called "Velocity". More details about using Velocity can be found here: http://jakarta.apache.org/velocity/user-guide.html Velocity templates in rap-X are HTML pages which include elements of dynamic, database derived data. rap-X provides each template with access to data variables, which are referenced by words beginning with a $ symbol. Examples of data variables are:
Within each data variable are data fields, which can accessed by the notation $variable.field, e.g.
The data fields available within requests are detailed here |
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