[opencms-dev] Newbie opencms programming question

[Robert Burén]

Hi all,

We are using opencms to run our, albeit pretty small, website. Now I
want to get my feet wet with some simple dynamic functionality on the
site. Basically, there are two tiny projects I want to do (outlined
below). What I want to ask the list is how to get started? What
documentation to read? How to test and deploy into opencms? Also: are
there already similar plugins out there, doing what I want to do?

My tiny projects are:
1. We have a set of PDFs on our site. Also -- there is a downloadable
zip file containing all PDFs. I want to create this zip file
programatically, from within opencms. Preferably, the zip file would
be cached in the opencms virtual filesystem, so that it is only
recreated when there exists a PDF file which is newer than the zip
file.

2. We have an external blog site, which can be read via RSS. I want to
include the titles and publish date of the five latest entries from
that site on our opencms site. I don't need a full RSS reader/client,
I just want to collect these pieces of information. Preferably, the
information would also be cached, so that not every request on our
site means a hit on the blog site. (The cache could be emptied every
ten minutes or so.)

Any help would be much appreciated!

/Robert