OpenCms 7 Development: Extending and customizing OpenCms through its Java API

OpenCms is a professional-level open-source Website Content Management System, based on Java and XML. Many companies or organizations have requirements that go beyond what is available in the standard OpenCms application. Thankfully, OpenCms can be used by Java developers to create sophisticated add-ons and customizations that extend the power of OpenCms in virtually unlimited directions.

Targeting version 7 of OpenCms, this book is for Java developers interested in extending and further customizing OpenCms through its Java API.

Starting by showing how to set up a development environment for OpenCms work, the book moves you through various tasks of increasing complexity. Some of the common tasks covered are building OpenCms, XML asset type development, templating, module development, user and role setup, and search integration. In addition to these common tasks some more advanced topics are covered such as self-registering users, RSS support, developing custom widgets and extending the administrative interface. All the topics include examples and are presented while building a sample blog site.

The skills you develop will make you an OpenCms developer to be reckoned with!

What you will learn from this book?

• An overview of the OpenCms development architecture
• Developing in the OpenCms environment
• Working with the templating system
• Using the template API
• Extending and using OpenCms beans in template code
• Using the JSTL tag library
• Template caching
• Understanding resource collectors
• Understanding and creating OpenCms modules
• Creating structured content types
• Rules for creating OpenCms schema files
• Registering content types with OpenCms
• User Interface Widgets and their options
• Nesting content types
• Using Validating XML editors to edit configuration files
• Using Eclipse and WebDAV for module development
• Configuring OpenCms Search
• Looking at search indexes
• Supporting searching in templates
• Understanding OpenCms security
• Adding user registration and web user logins
• Programmatic publishing of content
• Providing site customization features
• Designing and creating Custom OpenCms widgets
• Using OpenCms message strings for localization
• Adding RSS support to OpenCms
• Adding OpenCms Administration Points
• Using OpenCms List and Dialog classes
• Programmatically using OpenCms widgets

Approach

This book is a clear, practical tutorial to OpenCms development. It will take you through the development of an example site, illustrating the key concepts of OpenCms development with examples at every stage.

Who this book is written for?

The book is for Java developers with a basic knowledge of the operations of OpenCms. No previous experience of developing OpenCms is expected.