[opencms-dev] CMS framework suggestion

[Eugeny N Dzhurinsky]

On Mon, Aug 07, 2006 at 03:14:24PM +0100, Joe Desbonnet wrote:
> Yes it is designed to be that way. And there are several free third
> party modules out there (eg article module etc).
> 
> Since I already had lots of legacy code I took a different approach to
> integrating my application into OpenCms.
> 
> My approach is not to integrate the applications directly with
> OpenCms. Instead I use HTTP GET to send requests to a middle web
> services layer where all my hard "business logic" is stored (this is
> actually another Java webapp running in the same Tomcat container).
> That then sends pre-rendered HTML content to OpenCms which included in
> the content area of my OpenCms template. Yes, there is some overhead
> involved in generating HTTP GET requests etc but the FlexCache
> compensates for this.
> 
> For example the content of this page
> http://www.galway.net/about/gallery/ pulls images from a database and
> formats it into a 3 column table.  All that work is done by the middle
> layer.
> 
> So far this approach is working well. My middle layer application is
> developed using Eclipse and it gets updated one a week by just droping
> a new WAR file into to Tomcat -- no need to touch OpenCms.
> 
> I like to have a very clear separation of the business logic and the
> CMS. If for some reason in the future I want to switch CMS I can do
> with with out too much pain.

I'd prefer a way to create set of adapters and use them rather than passing
GET requests to application. What if cookies are required or you need to pass
some complex objects in HttpServletRequest object (setAttribute)? (it's
rhetorical questions, heh ;) )

I am not trying to obscure your way, and I don't  have legacy code, so I
simply need some example or tutorial about how to write modules or extend
OpenCMS, nothing more ;)

-- 
Eugene N Dzhurinsky