Metadata for the brave

Metadata  in Livelink (Yawn ContentServer) is mostly by a Object Called Categories.A Category Object again is of subtype 131 and it can have versions.Its content or version file looks like XML and translates the data structure for use with Livelink.When some one adds a Category to an Object like Document,Folder etc  what you are essentially doing is requesting the latest copy of the Category Template(131) or it will be the Category applied to the parent container.Then it goes through an oscript/weblingo layer where it paints the structure like is it a Text? is it Mandatory and so on.Increasingly I see OT advising customers to use SETS and that too with Multiple Values.I tried to stay away from SETS in my design because it is next to impossible to write reports when there is more than one value involved 🙂

A Picture is worth a thousand words so I am showing a Category called SapCategory as you can see I have some that are very self descriptive however these terminology is probably worth understanding.In Livelink projects you will affix useful metadata{ a set of categories(131), some Classifications(199) or RM Classifications (551) }.OT has prided itself on capability of its search and indexing engine(after all OT was the first guys to index the OED and that greatly increases the work they put in this ) so all this metadata that you put and inherit it down to millions of items is supposed to find you patterns of knowledge in your organization.The xECM side of the house puts technical categories so does AGA so that in first shot looking at the object metadata one can even say what it purports to be.Classifications and RM Classifications look like category metadata but they allow alternate taxonomies and navigation structures.

MVA-Multi Valued Attribute indicate by the + and – signs.In any case if you only have one Value also it is internally a List of values.On top of it now all Livelink servers can have that in more than one language . OT does not the make category metadata multi language but our good friends at Cassia ECM make it and sell it through OT.

Set -The Set is a place holder where in you can define more and more primitive datatypes and it looks aesthetically pleasing(?) or even easier to understand data.Both Sets and Categories subtype will say AttrType=-18 and AttrID indicates the position.

For techies see my revelation to the world I think the link is permanently lost

There is a simple Request Handler called attributes.dump ( perhaps it is hidden in the admin.index pages and you might need a SA prv) you will see that the Set Identifier does not have a Attribute ID

Nobody from OpenText has told the programming world or developers how to look at this DataStructure well not in so many words at least.. Everyone is using their own methods do something.How many SET parsing/example  requests happen in the OT KB and OT answers cryptically? Or as a Java or a C# programmer is one supposed to be that intelligent to figure everything out? I believe it is very shortsighted of OT to push towards their professional services,or WebReports to achieve anything and everything.Since the move from LAPI some hobby programmers have shown the parsing.I have had countless requests from developers who wanted to see how to go about it so this is a way to help them. Actually since all ReturnValues are coded for OOP apparently this is much easier than in LAPI days but still a new programmer cannot be expected to become a livelink knowledgeable person for participating in one project.

Imagine a Node Object like Document or Folder has had a category attached,then its values are in its MetaData Object.The MetaData Object consists of AttributeGroups which are akin to List of Categories.So if you have applied 7 Categorise expect 7.These 7 will show you empty shells or filled shells of information.

So I have this and another category attached /applied to an object

As you can see those are the two categories or an AttributeGroups Object of two AttributeGroup.OK so if you isolate one AttributeGroup you will get the individual keys(Attributes).OK then you need to test/cast these complex structures from their Livelink given out DataValue to things people can understand Namely StrinValue,IntegerValue and DateValue.Now if a Set is encountered you will get a TableValue object.Now the TableValue will contain a excel row like representation and is a RowValue Object.Once you isolate the RowValue into its DataValue you will get its IntegerValue,StringValue and such like.Good thing they did not allow a Set inside a Set 🙂

The key of an Attribute is made up of <category dataid>_<version>_<attributeID>

So hopefully the code I post in C# helps a poor soul.Now please understand that the Category Data Structure is a pretty complicated way how the Data is shown,how the Data is held in a Table and how the reporting table has been considered. When we were in the LAPI era the entire structure was given to you as a LLValue Object out of which you had to get the Types isolated and program.This was me in 2004 battling out a worked out example in LAPI documentation   which actually did not work if you actually cut and pasted the sample.So I just took it as a challenge and trying to learn the OT debugger and its Script actually helped me with it

 

Link to Code File coming soon 🙂 One thing I noticed in 2017 against CS16 is now OT has already built a category called “External Att” with some commonly asked of functionality Good Job…

Hopefully they might be trying to get rid of the “Additional Node Attributes” piece in OT

Screen Cap of when I run the code against a Node in LL.You can optimize the loops when you understand how the code is supposed to be written.Frankly my intention is to show  you how  to iterate the DataStructure.

 

A C# file that I wrote that takes a NodeID in Livelink and spits out Category Info

Including Sets & MVA

 

 

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Code Demonstration Pages

Mostly this will consist of CWS or SOAP samples.My setup is against a CS16 computer with OTDS but when I test I make sure I can login as ‘Admin’.For ease I write this using the Visual Studio C# express.Note Java WSAPI clients has differing Syntax,my blog has some hints but for the most part it will be adaptable.Note programmers who work in this are encoraged to understand flow of your code into the livelink server see my posts on a proper way to interpret errors you are getting in your program.when time permits I will post a a flow diagram.

What is CWS ?   How do you DEBUG ?  How to look at a SOAP Envelope?
You just have to get the shell from OT for starting java dev. Java data structures are less forgiving in their get/sets than C# as well. Common misconceptions like to write java client livelink has to run in tomcat all that is not true,the server part of livelink can be anything and the webservices hosted either way and you can write .net clients and java clients

A few years back the OT community had a lot of programmers and they all contributed widely to communities.opentext.com .Very thoughtless of OT one fine morning they shutdown the site.Most of the code I wrote for public consumption I had in my personal workspace or google drive.This time I am just going to put them in my google drive.You just have to requests me to see it.Note I will not entertain any requests for obtaining software or consultation.I do this pro bono so I don’t lose touch.

How to Rename Nodes in C#	Link	Request by
Workflow Service Example	Link	Request by
Categories/Attributes manipulation in C#	Link	Request by
Beginners parsing example to Categories/Attributes C#	Link	Request by
How do you manipulate Multi Valued Attributes( MVA) Java Snippet	Link	Answering for a KB thread
Beginners Adding a Version to a Existing File JAVA	Link	Answering for a KB thread
How to set Mandatory Attributes in a move (No Not as simple as it sounds:)	Link	Answering for a KB thread
A C# example that shows SET parsing and MVA’s	Link	Answering for a KB thread

Common Debug Protocol

****************************************** ***START UPDATE 10/3/2016*****************

LAPI and its client installer has become very hard to find. Moreover clients written in LAPI  in say Java/.NET will only work if your Livelink a.k.a Content Server is of version less than CS16.Readers who are new to LL programming is encouraged to read this to the approach and not to the exact lines of the code.What I mean is when you used to program in LAPI you were basically passing parameters to discrete calls by modelling it based on the webgui of livelink .SOAP based webservices called CWS is also the same,so if you do not try to do the task in the webgui and try to understand the business rules you will almost have no success in CWS too. OT is notorious for not putting fully functioning use cases and a walk through,so whenever possible I write code assuming the user has not worked in Livelink for X number of years and try to educate you all. Livelink,Content Server,Enterprise Server all of this has been Livelink’s marketing brand name changes over the years.CS i sused in many of the integrations like AGA, XECM, RMLINK  and you know you are programming against livelink if you see a link that looks like this  http(s)://somefriendlyURL/livelink.exe|cs.exe|llisapi.dll|cs.dll|livelink.In many places SAP/ SP /Exchange will be configured to talk to Archive Server and then they will use Livelink to read into archive server and turn that into LL objects for better presentment/RM and other aspects. The AGA product is moving away from LAPI(not sure totally or not) to REST API in LL.

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In most cases I have noticed that programmers brought into livelink a.k.a Content Server web server programming lack a general understanding of livelink and its business rules.The Vendor maintained links   is written almost to a starting novice but again people will run into problems.To mitigate this one has to have a simple protocol

1. Ask the livelink team a representative container(folder ,project,compound documents,document work spaces all of them are shells or containers to hold additional objects) that the CWS programmer can access using the webgui.
2. Ask how is authentication enforced.In almost 90% of places it will be SSO(NTLM,IWA,other LDAP methods)
3. In most cases CWS application where you source the WSDL’s from will be “anonymous” because that is the level of documentation OT gives admins which means that the CWS user has to be manual user in livelink also known as a user with a password the livelink admin team gives you
4. I have published several successful posts here  that allow me to do SSO(IWA/NTLM) that is because I know how to set it correctly.Most of it was looking at IWA webservices samples.
5. I have installed and configured OTDS as well ,it is a re-directional(kerberos implementation) .Simply put when you access a link such as http://localhost/livelink/llisapi.dll if OTDS authentication is involved your call is redirected to the OTDS server(Tomcat in the version I tried).The kerberos token that is prevalent in your domain login is used to establish who you are against a configured LDAP appliance like AD and returned back to the livelink server.Anybody who knows enough about livelink URL’s know the web escaped URL’s, you should see the re-direction when using wireshark or fiddler as well.  This ideas are my interpretaion and not OT’s so take this with a piece of slat.
6. The above OTDS authentication is overkill if Livelink was employed as a DMS or in your org people know that Livelink is there.It would make sense to tunnel xECM SAP Users your piggy backing on MYSAPSSO2   mostly integrations form other systems who want a seamless experienec.Altogether it is very easy to setup and implement save for the fact that creating SSO against AD is basically a one click operation.

Allright so what is the post about

If you are a .NET CWS/EWS programmer you will basically be sending this token with each service client call because livelink is http and state based and you never know if  the request is being handled by the same server or the same thread.

You would see .NET code like this

DocumentManagement.OTAuthentication dmOTAuth = new DocumentManagement.OTAuthentication();
ContentService.OTAuthentication     csOTAuth = new ContentService.OTAuthentication();
SearchService.OTAuthentication      ssOTAuth = new SearchService.OTAuthentication();

and things like

string token = authclient.AuthenticateUser(username, password);
if (token != null)
{
ssOTAuth.AuthenticationToken = token;
dmOTAuth.AuthenticationToken = token;
csOTAuth.AuthenticationToken = token;

}

contextID = dm.GetVersionContentsContext(ref dmOTAuth, dataID, 0);

the above is akin to a logged in user trying to download.the ref keyword is modern .net above 2.5 CLR or higher

If you are a JAVA CWS/EWS

In Java, however, you don’t need to do this and instead you set authentication information into the object representing the service. In your code you do this

setSoapHeader((WSBindingProvider) search, otAuth);

There are many more subtle differences with Java and .NET but for the most part it should work cleanly

If one were interested in debugging at the livelink server

• Method 1: Login to the livelink URL that usually ends in /llisapi.dll or livelink.exe or livelink.Do you see an authentication screen that looks like an HTML page and not one that looks like a windows auth prompt?.If you were seamlessly taken into the application then this “instance” of livelink server has its authentication set to some authentication.assuming the simplest mechanism it could be IWA also interchangeably known as NTLM,SSO etc etc.

• Method2:Open up the opentext.ini file on your “instance”.Put debug=2 and WantLapiLogs=true and re-start the instance. Then pass a simple wsapi call like calling enterprise workspace or so.One of the simple java samples you have here https://knowledge.opentext.com/knowledge/llisapi.dll/fetch/2001/15080935/-15106263/15106294/15106295/16376487/17990637/45500683/java_src/cwsCodeSamples_Java.zip.Look in the thread logs for places like <inArgs and <outArgs.It will have debug info.If you don’t see it here and your code works perhaps your code is getting answered by another instance or terminating at the webserver not even reaching livelink.

• Method 3-Put Fiddler and learn how to use it when you hit a webserver.Then you can actually see your WSAPI client code making requests in Action.Many  times they are going to indicate something.

• Method 4: There is a livelink sysadmin request handler that goes like <LIVELINKURL>?func=admin.testargs.Do you see “REMOTE_USER” filled and a auth mechanism something resembling this  AUTH_TYPE =Negotiate REMOTE_USER =DOMAIN\USERID or userid@domain REQUEST_METHOD =GET Then chances are this livelink is protected by a auth method other than “anonymous” Most webservices samples written by OT pertains to simple anonymously authenticated livelink servers.Do you have SSO samples lying in the web or here.Sure search for Guy Pomerleaux or me for a few who have ventured with it in the forums .Just by trial and error of the Web.Config and App.Config I have suceeded.Why wouldnt OT put a official sample,guesses are different web server different ways of deploying livelink,too much work to officially support it although the OTDS mechanism is kind of a middleware to address that 🙂
• Method 5:Search Debugging Livelink when people or programs search use the Livelink Search API to call it. While it looks integrated believe it or not the searching is a different software and it can be used for any general purpose searching.Read OT history as the first searching company in the world(Yahoo search Engine :).Sometimes it becomes difficult to create queries properly so it is very easy however I do it like this.Isolate a named server(some address that wont be like a LB URL).Find that server’s Opentext.ini and in the [options] area add wantSearchLogs=true.Then run a search from the GUI.In all likelihood for each search you will find a new txt file that will contain the query.Try to understand it and repurpose. Similar files will exist in the Admin server for prospector queries and intelligent classification queries.

Now I have given you many pointers that would lead to successful coding.However let it be known that a livelink can be configured in very many different ways such as an admin can put a expiration  of livelink cookie to a very low value,you could be bouncing off livelink servers ,your code may come from a redirected system such as SAP or SP lots of problems could occur if the architecture is not well understood by replying people like me or even you.I am not a OT employee but have worked enough to know certain things that could occur.So my simple request to you would be to as much as possible educate yourself and the forum about the same. Also try the simplest mechanisms of OT code first to iron out the difficulties.It should not be too  hard.

SOAPUI one could use some lather

****************************************** ***START UPDATE 10/3/2016*****************

LAPI and its client installer has become very hard to find. Moreover clients written in LAPI  in say Java/.NET will only work if your Livelink a.k.a Content Server is of version less than CS16.Readers who are new to LL programming is encouraged to read this to the approach and not to the exact lines of the code.What I mean is when you used to program in LAPI you were basically passing parameters to discrete calls by modelling it based on the webgui of livelink .SOAP based webservices called CWS is also the same,so if you do not try to do the task in the webgui and try to understand the business rules you will almost have no success in CWS too. OT is notorious for not putting fully functioning use cases and a walk through,so whenever possible I write code assuming the user has not worked in Livelink for X number of years and try to educate you all. Livelink,Content Server,Enterprise Server all of this has been Livelink’s marketing brand name changes over the years.CS i sused in many of the integrations like AGA, XECM, RMLINK  and you know you are programming against livelink if you see a link that looks like this  http(s)://somefriendlyURL/livelink.exe|cs.exe|llisapi.dll|cs.dll|livelink.In many places SAP/ SP /Exchange will be configured to talk to Archive Server and then they will use Livelink to read into archive server and turn that into LL objects for better presentment/RM and other aspects. The AGA product is moving away from LAPI(not sure totally or not) to REST API in LL.

**********************************************END UPDATE****************************

 

In many instances I have been dumb founded by many things people get to do with livelink totally unheard of.Since the world has gone mobile and livelink’s own mobile solutions involving REST API are somehow limited people use creative ways to get around that.Many times they get stuck because OT examples once in C# and now days in java as well don’t give them complete working ,hand holding examples using the world’s most used SOAP generator using SOAP UI

Why it is so I don’t know but it could perhaps be drain on OT resources, to make money for OT ECO system consultants and OT professional services but in many cases a frustrated developer is not what OT wants. But wait a minute look at the support job that Web Reports / Active View offers.You post a thing and in two hrs you have answers even though some people not even doing their homework misuses.But what it has made is basically it has geared any new oncoming development to be done in its framework.  Successful software is only possible if there is a good educated programmers complementing the product.Enough said I use SOAPUI to test if the WSDL’s I deployed in an organizations web server works or not meaning see the WSDL on the browser is not enough you need to get a authentication token and do something in livelink to know if everything is working or not.So I use it to do small things and not any involved things.Some SAP/OT consultants have shown me a better SOAP tool that they use internally but I have forgotten its name.

Why this post?

People when they are in a bind do ask me or if I see something and  I have time I experiment.

Here’s an actual email thread that I am publishing so if some other poor soul is in the weeds it may sometime help that person.The email also contains some very simple workflow info which I feel most CWS programmers lack as they have not played really with livelink.Without further ado here it is names has been masked for ovbious reasons but everything else unedited.

 

 

Email qn to me

Hello Mr. Appu,  Looking for a little help. I was searching on the web for an issue with workflowservices for CS10.   I have an issue updating the formdata value using the UpdateWorkitemData using SOAP UI. It gives me the error “Form not Found”.  Although I have the code working in Java, fine.   Please let me know if you faced such similar issues. OT support wasn’t helpful either.   My code below   <soapenv:Envelope xmlns:soapenv=”http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/” xmlns:urn=”urn:api.ecm.opentext.com” xmlns:urn1=”urn:WorkflowService.service.livelink.opentext.com” xmlns:urn2=”urn:Core.service.livelink.opentext.com“>      <soapenv:Header>    REMOVED FOR CLARITY </soapenv:Envelope>   Regards,

My Reply

Do you have access to the KB ,if so see this post of how I helped a person with a SoapUI call https://knowledge.opentext.com/knowledge/cs.dll?func=ll&objId=35766457&objAction=viewincontainer&ShowReplyEntry=35843158#forum_topic_35843158if not have a look at the response I posted http://www.tek-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=1741405In any case I don’t do anything with SoapUI other than to test if the WSDL works and I can get authentication. If you are positive the java code gets you what you want observe the SOAP packet and reverse engineer it for SOAPUI SOAPUI does not support polymorphism that is the geek speak on this although I don’t really know what that all means. OT SAP people use another SOAP generator but I have forgotten its name. I saw it about 4 yrs back as part of their archive server offering which they said is superior to SOAPUI.   Now in case you don’t really know about WF /forms etc what I advise people is this Only the “Workflow Manager” user/group people can update things. You can find that by painting the map in the GUI and looking at who is in its “Management” group or simply see if you can click on status of the map and its shows you the executing things. At the minimum the workflow should contain a template of the form you can see that also by looking at the workflow status object   If you are sure the form object is there and you can update it within the GUI then CWS code should work so long as it is written according to what the WSDL expects You may be able to get a little more detail if you put debug=2,wantlapilogs=true, wantlogs=true in that livelink server which receives the request Always do the easiest first look at the workflow status object with the GUI.WF is one of the only things in livelink that as “SA” user like ‘Admin’ cannot see. only people in WF Mangers can see its internals.   Good luck.

Hi Reply Thanking me not many return any such thing so I was very happy.

Hi ,  Thanks a lot for your tip. I debugged the java code thru fiddler and found the XML  structure to be updated. I’m actually working with the SAP mobility project (outsourced to <name withdrawn>). They couldn’t use the  java or C# codes and needed REST API, which unfortunately is not available for workflow services.   Once again a humble thanks for your timely help.     Regards,   <name withdrawn>

 

 

 

 

 

Workflow Service Example to get a Attachment ID

****************************************** ***START UPDATE 10/3/2016*****************

LAPI and its client installer has become very hard to find. Moreover clients written in LAPI  in say Java/.NET will only work if your Livelink a.k.a Content Server is of version less than CS16.Readers who are new to LL programming is encouraged to read this to the approach and not to the exact lines of the code.What I mean is when you used to program in LAPI you were basically passing parameters to discrete calls by modelling it based on the webgui of livelink .SOAP based webservices called CWS is also the same,so if you do not try to do the task in the webgui and try to understand the business rules you will almost have no success in CWS too. OT is notorious for not putting fully functioning use cases and a walk through,so whenever possible I write code assuming the user has not worked in Livelink for X number of years and try to educate you all. Livelink,Content Server,Enterprise Server all of this has been Livelink’s marketing brand name changes over the years.CS i sused in many of the integrations like AGA, XECM, RMLINK  and you know you are programming against livelink if you see a link that looks like this  http(s)://somefriendlyURL/livelink.exe|cs.exe|llisapi.dll|cs.dll|livelink.In many places SAP/ SP /Exchange will be configured to talk to Archive Server and then they will use Livelink to read into archive server and turn that into LL objects for better presentment/RM and other aspects. The AGA product is moving away from LAPI(not sure totally or not) to REST API in LL.

**********************************************END UPDATE****************************

 

 

 

A fellow poster in KB is asking for help with Workflow Service examples.

Again my guess is the programmer does not no enough about how livelink handles workflow data structures so hopefully my article does some help. A frustrated developer in this case because there ain’t official samples from OpenText will start to trash the product which I hate to be happening. OT is busy with Core and Appworks(nothing was said about this at conference so is it already dead?) it seems and to this day I cannot understand why OT responses to WebReports is such a high pleasurable experience whereas everything else is basically a lukewarm thing.

I needed to brush my new java skills so I downloaded java samples from KB and started looking at it. It looks to me there is a lot of setup one does with java in C# alsl one does is type a little bit of code….Anyway the poster was using System.out so I am guessing he was a java programmer.There might be several better ways to do it but what I did was convert my old C# code to do that

which was here https://communities.opentext.com/communities/cs.dll?func=ll&objId=10153785&objAction=download&viewType=1.The site is free to the public.

 

1. Workflows are Churned by a map created in livelink See Pic of the new 10.5 Map
2. When you Click Initiate a WF Record is inserted with a pair of dataids called WorkID, SubWorkID in most simple workflows they are the same when you or livelink creates subworkflows they differ.
3. By programming all you are doing is making sure you can get to the running instance and look at its internals
4. It never seldom one changes the logic of map with CWS or LAPI programming.
5. The livelink workflow carries several packages of the workflow,when you say you want Attachments you get a Container much like a folder to put documents,if you say Attributes you get that,if you put a Form template you get that and so on and so forth
6. The above map is reproduced faithfully in a table that is how livelink knows the evaluate conditions etc, if you change the real master map then only instances churned form that will be affected not earlier ones
7. Attributes and Forms are basically going to borrow/rely heavily on categories and attributes code
8. The code for finding the Attachments in a Workflow Instance and downloading it.
9. My code shows how to get one item in the WF Data Structure a.k.a Container ID .You will need to write recursive algorithms if there were folders within that particular id.

What is Enterprise Web Services a.k.a Content Web Services

****************************************** ***START UPDATE 10/3/2016*****************

LAPI and its client installer has become very hard to find. Moreover clients written in LAPI  in say Java/.NET will only work if your Livelink a.k.a Content Server is of version less than CS16.Readers who are new to LL programming is encouraged to read this to the approach and not to the exact lines of the code.What I mean is when you used to program in LAPI you were basically passing parameters to discrete calls by modelling it based on the webgui of livelink .SOAP based webservices called CWS is also the same,so if you do not try to do the task in the webgui and try to understand the business rules you will almost have no success in CWS too. OT is notorious for not putting fully functioning use cases and a walk through,so whenever possible I write code assuming the user has not worked in Livelink for X number of years and try to educate you all. Livelink,Content Server,Enterprise Server all of this has been Livelink’s marketing brand name changes over the years.CS i sused in many of the integrations like AGA, XECM, RMLINK  and you know you are programming against livelink if you see a link that looks like this  http(s)://somefriendlyURL/livelink.exe|cs.exe|llisapi.dll|cs.dll|livelink.In many places SAP/ SP /Exchange will be configured to talk to Archive Server and then they will use Livelink to read into archive server and turn that into LL objects for better presentment/RM and other aspects. The AGA product is moving away from LAPI(not sure totally or not) to REST API in LL.

**********************************************END UPDATE****************************

 

Many people seem to have understood my post  about LAPI 

The AGA (Sharepoint to Livelink Integration) product is the only officially supported OT product that seems to use old lapi binaries.Most of us have moved away for using it although when you are in a time crunch you can still use it.If you still want to use lapi make sure you are writing client code in java which takes care of most inconsistencies regarding 64/vs 32 bit J# problems.If you are a modern day .net buff see how old lapi can be run in new .net ways.

Back to CWS/EWS- Livelink is branded Content Server so it is no surprise that its API reflects that.The binaries that make up the wsdl is delivered without any additional installation  in the same file path as the livelink server is installed.So if you run your livelink in a IIS webserver,you just “expose” the  code from OT into a application.If you run your livelink in a Tomcat server then just dump the war file and TC will do the magic.The Web.Config in both he deployments make sure where it can talk to.For e.g in a livelink install if you see the Web.Config say localhost & 2099 when you call the beautiful code form your client it sends all that “stuff” into the livelink “server” listening on “localhost” and “2099”.None of this is hard coded and most livelink organizations will not use localhost resolution.And as a client api programmer you don’t need to worry too much.Ask for a webgui account before you start any livelink programming.It will keep you sane.What you are programming with a language is the same “business rules'” that livelink will throw to your code.Typical “new” programmer things like expecting category workspaces,enterprise workspaces to be 2004 & 2000 should be avoided the mistakes are very commonly seen in even vended applications.there are many livelinks in the world that do not have those ids.BTW like many others I also thought that to write java client code I had to have livelink running in a java app server.No I regularly now write .Net clients against a TC deployed WSAPI and java clients against a IIS deployed WSAPI. I also have written oscript based CWS things that is only needed when OT supplied stubs & proxies won’t cut a particular task.BTW when you install Records management,Physical Objects,Classifications they all deploy their CWS API.As your administrator to deploy that if you wanted to do programming against those functionalities . I advocate bundling  everything under one website it makes the admin’s life easier well they are unsupported by OT but I do it anyway

Once you are prepared to first write your lines of code you may want to understand what you are doing.

1. Livelink is a protected/authenticated DMS application so it will check if you have a valid account and if you have permissions to a particular object. BTW OpenText is the company making these products as far as I know there is not a product(binary) in that name.many consultants I have worked with refers to “we have given stuff to OpenText” which ain’t happening because there is  nothing called that you can hand it to” In webgui the authentication is achieved primarily by putting a userid and password,almost nobody uses this method now or by a authentication service.In most companies if the application is IIS served that means you will almost for certain be vetted by IWA.  Unfortunately OT does not provide samples ,I have written things and many others have done it too.   nobody But ultimately your code has to pass a webserver and pass into the application layer
2. OT markets a TC (java stack) application called OTDS .It is some very simple java code that interacts with livelink,active directory or other LDAP sources .It relies on your call being passed off to a OTDS server which uses industry standard methods to create a auth token.In many simple installs it is akin to the cookie that is given to your browser after login.OT provides samples using that.It also will be mandatory in several OT installs which are primarily not a DMS.Like SAP integration,AGA integration and so on.You now have “kewl” tools like Fiddler,Wireshark etc to debug many things
3. If you  have a authentication token half the battle is one,you can now try simple things like adding folders,documents,applying categories to etc when you stumble simply bring up the web ui browser and see what you are trying is possible in “that” livelink.Because code you may have got working in another project may not because every livelink install can define its business rules differently 🙂
4. These conditions can be tested in a matter of minutes by using  SOAPUI  .Once you have gotten in with a auth token and accessed enterprise workspace or perosnal workspaces,then switch to a java client ide or a .net ide . SOAPUI can only be used for certain aspect,things will get extremely complex when you encounter category/attribute data structures(funny the push to get away from llvalue data structures in lapi is still there albeit using data structures like AttributeGroups) so soapui will not cut it.

Other Buzzwords you may hear in a Livelink based project

• REST API. OT has been forced by the programming world to have a REST API implementation available in kick butt livelink installs.Note every call with a REST API is akin to you accessing livelink via a browser so save yourself some head ache by not designing bulk loader things with it.You may want to show off your livelink in a mobile application.BTW I think AppWorks is the marketing hype name for that.
• Search API-when you are in a livelink session and type a search term it is the Search API that is working for you.You can create cool search based apps with it.For heaven sake resist the temptation to write lapi or CWS code for livelink search it ain’t very easy and it si convoluted.
• ELS API- It is the wrapper connecting Livelink and archive server .The definition is not technically correct.If you wanted a SAP system to use Records management or Business Work Spaces you would put this middle ware called (old name RCS). This is a solution… means utimately you will have to pay people who know SAP Basis configuartion & Functional  , Livelink configuration and Archive server configuration.Recently a guy asked me about CMIS  . I looked at it and I told him to concentrate on the 3 aspects and he figured it out note that CMIS is a industry protocol  and ot uses that in a ELS API layer for some objective I know not. Most solutions you will hear terms like Archive Link ,RM Link,ECM Link 

Happy Livelink API or CWS or EWS programming

Content Server a.k.a Livelink is plain awesome

Patrick you nail it….

http://www.answermodules.com/contentserver-application/

The poster removed the above link but you get the idea this link should work

http://blog.answermodules.com/30-minutes-application/

So You want to Change Categories/Attributes of a Object in livelink via CWS ?

****************************************** ***START UPDATE 10/3/2016*****************

LAPI and its client installer has become very hard to find. Moreover clients written in LAPI  in say Java/.NET will only work if your Livelink a.k.a Content Server is of version less than CS16.Readers who are new to LL programming is encouraged to read this to the approach and not to the exact lines of the code.What I mean is when you used to program in LAPI you were basically passing parameters to discrete calls by modelling it based on the webgui of livelink .SOAP based webservices called CWS is also the same,so if you do not try to do the task in the webgui and try to understand the business rules you will almost have no success in CWS too. OT is notorious for not putting fully functioning use cases and a walk through,so whenever possible I write code assuming the user has not worked in Livelink for X number of years and try to educate you all. Livelink,Content Server,Enterprise Server all of this has been Livelink’s marketing brand name changes over the years.CS i sused in many of the integrations like AGA, XECM, RMLINK  and you know you are programming against livelink if you see a link that looks like this  http(s)://somefriendlyURL/livelink.exe|cs.exe|llisapi.dll|cs.dll|livelink.In many places SAP/ SP /Exchange will be configured to talk to Archive Server and then they will use Livelink to read into archive server and turn that into LL objects for better presentment/RM and other aspects. The AGA product is moving away from LAPI(not sure totally or not) to REST API in LL.

**********************************************END UPDATE****************************

UPDATE 6/30/2016

Pls let me know if you can see this link this is a word document in my google drive
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5nwgBm7a2iwSkFDbjN2eEs1MDQ/view?usp=sharing
This second link is the C# file to the above word document
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5nwgBm7a2iwaFJ3Q0g2cmVoQzQ/view?usp=sharing

If people want the link they just have to requeest it from a google account it says.Free hosting sites spam me so much.
I say on the word document that you have to have a small idea of what you are doing Try doing it though the GUI to understand
Generic code can be written but since I am doing this pro bono I put the onus on the reader to understand the flow.It is repurposed from the KB code thatshows category and attributes

***************************************************************************

 

UPDATE 1/25/2015-I LOST ALL CONTENT WHICH WAS STORED IN COMMUNITIES.OPENTEXT.COM.IF YOU ARE A STARTER READING THIS AND WOULD LIKE TO SEE THE ORIGINAL CONTENT DEPENDING ON TIME I HAVE I CAN SEND YOU SNIPPETS.LEAVE A COMMENT TO SUCH EFFECT.

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I have seen the new tutorials in livelink web services. It shows you to create a category and apply it all in one session.Several friends and people who are tasked with doing that would ask me sometimes whether one needs to create a category to use it?No in most livelink places Category Creation is a System Admin Chore.Further the categories play a direct role with the regions in the search engine infrastructure.So if one million objects had one million categories that livelink’s search regions page is never going to show.So when a tutorial from the Vendor incorrectly shows creation of the category right before using it it is tantamount to misleading on coming developers.I hope and stress that the OT tutorial would say something to that effect.Just take the tutorial as it is possible to create a category object in livelink.Further almost all programmers who are hired would be asked to change existing values in a a document or a folder.I had written a simple C# code that iterates over the categories and shows the node (Broken link to a OT livelink system I have made the link go to my google drive)properties as console echo statements almost in true oscript fashion.With some work to it was able to use that with the published samples form OT to change a StringValue.

I strongly urge readers/consumers to test this properly since it has almost been not tested nor do I intend to use it when somebody asks me to use it.It was written purely for self education.

The Code Bundle-A word Document,C# code and its app.config

(Broken link to a OT livelink system I have made the link go to my google drive)

There apparently looks like a lot of code but if you have the C# debugger and a little bit of time to yourself you should be able to crack it.Also this was the first code I wrote without bringing up builder and truly using livelink GUI and my upcoming knowledge of C# and its debugger.It is all good stuff makes it easier I think to code.

Having come from the LAPI world progressing my way into Oscript I think that CWS/EWS is a right step in integration of livelink with other systems.It is actually made programming much easier.I wish that OT would actually post samples that are relevant to a integrator’s job.

Subsequently many people have asked about manipulating SETS,I say use SETS only very rarely as it only has a good GUI.It is very difficult to write reports on.A SET is an entire Category inside another Category. I wrote a reply having used this in Oscript.Here’s a very Quick and Dirty Sample

 

Java Samples for Content Webservices

 
I LOST ALL CONTENT WHICH WAS STORED IN COMMUNITIES.OPENTEXT.COM.IF YOU ARE A STARTER READING THIS AND WOULD LIKE TO SEE THE ORIGINAL CONTENT DEPENDING ON TIME I HAVE I CAN SEND YOU SNIPPETS.LEAVE A COMMENT TO SUCH EFFECT.

Java Samples for Content Webservices are few and far in between.OT mainly puts samples in C# and many  a times I myself wonder if my company did not allow me to do that how I would do that in Java.In all truth OT ships a massive application called TreeView.java and TreeView.s ln for both languages .But the java thing takes a lot of setup especially if one was not keeping active in that world.However I used the NetBeansIDE to actually do most of that so I use that debugging environment to try all my java stuff Recently I debugged how to run a Live Report in livelink via C# webservices.Then somebody wanted me to show them how to do it via Java.One of these days I want to return to seeing if I can do all this command line with nothing else other than notepad.

Well I created two word documents, my guess is the poster did not speak english  very well,did not know livelink nor did know java to start with  .Hence I dumbed it enough for people to follow in almost any criteria.

 

Having livelink and its builder helps me in my endeavours and so Oscript remains my first love although I am getting farther and farther from it all

 

I have these files in the Communities website

If I had a LR taking a string parameter  how to write that in Java(C# is available aplenty)

If I had a LR taking a integer parameter how to write that in Java(C#is available aplenty)

There is a bug with Live Report Extensions.A poster in KB said that OT is aware of it.

Why Having LR Extensions(something that Webreports) company produces breaks Livereport calling with Webservices of OT

 

 

How to Parse a Node’s categories in C# WCF code

****************************************** ***START UPDATE 10/3/2016*****************

LAPI and its client installer has become very hard to find. Moreover clients written in LAPI  in say Java/.NET will only work if your Livelink a.k.a Content Server is of version less than CS16.Readers who are new to LL programming is encouraged to read this to the approach and not to the exact lines of the code.What I mean is when you used to program in LAPI you were basically passing parameters to discrete calls by modelling it based on the webgui of livelink .SOAP based webservices called CWS is also the same,so if you do not try to do the task in the webgui and try to understand the business rules you will almost have no success in CWS too. OT is notorious for not putting fully functioning use cases and a walk through,so whenever possible I write code assuming the user has not worked in Livelink for X number of years and try to educate you all. Livelink,Content Server,Enterprise Server all of this has been Livelink’s marketing brand name changes over the years.CS i sused in many of the integrations like AGA, XECM, RMLINK  and you know you are programming against livelink if you see a link that looks like this  http(s)://somefriendlyURL/livelink.exe|cs.exe|llisapi.dll|cs.dll|livelink.In many places SAP/ SP /Exchange will be configured to talk to Archive Server and then they will use Livelink to read into archive server and turn that into LL objects for better presentment/RM and other aspects. The AGA product is moving away from LAPI(not sure totally or not) to REST API in LL.

**********************************************END UPDATE****************************

Recently a programmer asked me how you would show the values in a nodes categories.He had done all except up to the fact that he did not know how to get the

real values hidden in Stringvalue, Integervalue, boolean etc.I don’t remember seeing a good example but C#’s good debugger helped me.Also quite a posts form people like Sean Walker,Rob Vanderpoel

helped me understand the structure although I like seeing simple full samples rather than snippets

After you get the AttributeGroups,you have to go into that and get the DisplayName and keys and based on the type you have to cast that value making sure to handle nulls as well

perhaps now I can write better set attributes because i was wondering how one would write a generic call with the examples in OT.

I was able to do this in about 1.5 hrs and learned something as well.The code was done in a hurry and based off Jason Smith’s starter examples

here’s a link in case somebody needs it

 

Or email exchange hiding the actual names etc

Hi Appu,

Thank you for this information, it is very similar to what the REMOVED NAME consultant has produced so far, however the part we are stuck with is getting from the “Key” value to the actual data shown in Livelink.

For example the output for the document you reference below looks something like:

Display Name: Title –- Its key is: 122343.9.24

We would like to see:

Display Name: Title –- Its value is: WEB SERVICES NEED BETTER EXAMPLES

Is this something that you have been able to accomplish? There doesn’t seem to be any calls to make the jump from Key to Value.

Thanks,