Patrick Picard

 
As I was playing around with uploading documents to an Xpages application, some of my documents were not being created as they should. Looking at the console, I saw the following error:

[1347586:00011-04627] 02/25/2010 08:38:42   HTTP JVM: WARNING: CLFAD####W: File Domino Web Service Part 3.pdf of size: 1258647 exceeds the max file upload size of 1048576. ClientId: view:_id1:_id34:fileUpload1


Is it possible to bubble this error to the xpage and notify the user that the file was too big? The current behavior is not appropriate as the user will not know why the document disappeared to lala land!

 After completing the Redwiki tutorial on xpages, I have  built a list of annoyances and as a result posted them on IdeaJam. Let your voice be heard :)

Please review the ideas and vote to your heart's content

In Javascript Editor, Group elements in the reference pane and sort


Use the same color coding amongst various Editors (LS,JS,Java)


Xpages outline view - Expand/Collapse all


XPages - Surface field hints/Help description using dojo.Tooltip automatically

 

Yesterday, I completed the Xpages tutorial in the redwiki http://www-10.lotus.com/ldd/ddwiki.nsf/dx/Building_an_XPage_web_application_from_scratch

I found the tutorial to be really good, except that it had many errors. So I figured I'd help out.

The tutorial is in PDF format, so I cannot modify it. While I was completing the tutorial (I had it printed), I annotated all areas with issues. This morning I compiled all the issues i've found and put them in a word document. This turned into a 20 pages document. I've emailed John Bergland my changes and hopefully they will be integrated back shortly.

In the process, I've realized how painful wiki's can be.

Route 1: PDF is attached
Pros:

• Easy to print
• For the creator, it is easy to create the content. Use your favorite editor, then export to PDF
  

Cons:

• Cannot update on the fly

Route 2: Tutorial is fully Wiki'fied
Pros:

• Allows inline edits
• Allows multiple editors
  

Cons:

• Wiki markup is a PITA
• Adding/updating screenshots is a PITA * 10
• Markup is broken at times

In each above case, would I have contributed my changes back to the source?
Case 1: Yes, I managed to write down my comments in a Word document, paste in screenshots of problem areas, and email the creator.
Case 2: No. While many errors were textual (I could edit the wiki), many issues involved screenshots. This would require me to

1. Take new screenshots
2. Save the screenshots 1 by 1 to a file
3. Upload all screenshots to the wiki
4. Link the screenshots in the wiki markup

The above steps are way more than I'm willing to devote personally as it is not productive. While Case 1 is not productive either, I was able to use tools that do a good job in editing/managing content. Had the content been in a Word document, I could have modified it easily and reupload the file...which would have been the best case scenario

My story leads to the questions:

• Can the wiki's be accessed from a notes client with the full rich text experience?
• Are wiki's really the way we should be collaborating on content?
• Couldn't we manage the content using a real document editor and post the content to the wiki

If you are doing the tutorial and wish to see the suggestions I gave back, see the attachment
http://www.bleedyellow.com/blogs/patpicos/resource/Xpagesfromscratch2.zip

 I thought I'd share a gotcha that bit me in the *** this morning.

While doing form validation, I called the uidoc.gotoField("fieldname") and it kept bombing with an error "Cannot locate field"

After further troubleshooting, it seems that the gotoField method does not find fields that are in a collapsed section. odd....

My workaround was to auto-expand all sections affected when in Edit mode


Mood: annoyed!

From what I can see in the yellowsphere and at lotusphere, Xpages is a pretty cool technology offering notes developers tools not available to Web-ify applications.

However, everytime I look at moving an application to Xpages, some form contains Rich Text. My users are used to pasting screenshots from the clipboard right into notes documents and changing that habit is not an option.

Actually, I have the same issue with wikis. I'd like to contribute to them, but unfortunately, it forces me to save all screenshots to disk, then upload them, then link them in the document. A pretty painful process when used to PRTScreen --> CTRL-V, then resize.

At lotusphere, the Xpage folks mentioned that the Rich Text control will be enhanced significantly....but will it be enough to solve the above problem?

Have other vendors found a solution to allow pasting of images into fields on a web form? (without using applets!)

Maybe IBM should leverage the Symphony code for a web rich-text editor if that is possible (and not huge..)

 For most of the afternoon, i've been playing with RichTextTable's in lotuscript and its been an awful experience so far.

I have a form I would like to display status updated in a table. Basically, the first column will contain the date and username of the person adding a status update and the 2nd column needs to be the user comments.....in Richtext

First Issue I ran into is that you cant manipulate rich text while the document is open. So I moved my code to an action button that is clicked when the document is in read mode. The button makes the changes, saves the document, closes the uidoc, then reopens it through ws.editDocument

Now my main issue is to bring in the user comments in richtext to the table. I tried using a ws.Dialog opening a comments form with a rich text field. For some reason the data typed in that rich text field is never available to me. Even if I call a save on that document, the rich text data is not saved.

Here's what my form looks like after 1 status update (hardcoded user message). Everytime the user clicks the action button "add status update", the code

• gets a handle on the RT field,
  
• finds the table (if missing, creates it),
  
• then adds a row,
  
• navigates to the first new cell and add the date/username
• navigates to the 2nd new cell and add some hardcode message (my hope is to add the user input...)
  

Action Button Code:
Sub Click(Source As Button)
    Dim session As New NotesSession
    Dim db As NotesDatabase
    Dim ws As New NotesUIWorkspace
    Dim uidoc As NotesUIDocument
    Dim doc As NotesDocument
    Dim rtnav As NotesRichTextNavigator
    Dim user As New NotesName(session.UserName)
    Set db = session.CurrentDatabase
    Set uidoc = ws.CurrentDocument
    Set doc = ws.CurrentDocument.Document
    Dim rtTable As NotesRichTextTable
   
    Dim commentsRTI As NotesRichTextItem
    Dim commentsItemRTI As NotesRichTextItem
    Set commentsRTI = doc.GetFirstItem("StatusComments")
    rowCount% = 1
    columnCount% = 2
   
    If (commentsRTI Is Nothing) Then
        Set commentsRTI = doc.CreateRichTextItem("StatusComments")
    End If
   
    Set rtnav = commentsRTI.CreateNavigator
    If Not rtnav.FindFirstElement(RTELEM_TYPE_TABLE) Then
        Call commentsRTI.AppendTable(rowCount%, columnCount%)
        rtnav.FindFirstElement(RTELEM_TYPE_TABLE)
        Set rtTable = rtnav.GetElement
    Else
        Set rtTable = rtnav.GetElement
        Call rtTable.AddRow(1)
    End If
   
    'Get comment from user
    Dim commentsDoc As NotesDocument
    Set commentsDoc = db.CreateDocument()
    commentsDoc.Form = "Comments"
    'flag = ws.DialogBox( "SC" , [autoHorzFit] , [autoVertFit] , [noCancel] , [noNewFields] , [noFieldUpdate] , [readOnly] , "Please enter comments" , commentsDoc , [sizeToTable] , [noOkCancel] , [okCancelAtBottom] )
    flag = ws.DialogBox("Comments",True,True,False,False,False,False,"Comments",commentsDoc)
    If flag Then
        Call commentsDoc.Save(True,False)   'The RT field data is lost ....
        Set commentsItemRTI = commentsDoc.GetFirstItem("commentsItem")  'Returns nothing :(
    Else
        Exit Sub
    End If
    rows% = rtTable.RowCount
    cell% = rows% * 2 - 1
    Call rtnav.FindNthElement(RTELEM_TYPE_TABLECELL,cell%)
   
    'Set who made the update
    Call commentsRTI.BeginInsert(rtnav)
    Call commentsRTI.AppendText(Str(Now) + " - " + user.Abbreviated)
    Call commentsRTI.EndInsert
    Call rtnav.FindNextElement(RTELEM_TYPE_TABLECELL)
    'Add the actual update
    Call commentsRTI.BeginInsert(rtnav)
    Call commentsRTI.AppendRTItem(commentsItemRTI)
    'Call commentsRTI.AppendText("Another update")
    Call commentsRTI.EndInsert
    Call rtnav.FindNextElement(RTELEM_TYPE_TABLECELL)
   
  REM Save document and refresh view
Done:
    Call doc.Save(True, False)
    Call uidoc.Close
    Call ws.ViewRefresh
    Call ws.EditDocument(False,doc)
    Call commentsdoc.Remove(True)
End Sub

Reasons for looking into this approach:

• I want the status updates to be controlled and include user/date
  
• The status updates have to be rich text
• I want the status updates to be within that document, not within outside documents
• I'm not there with Xpages....otherwise I'd convert the form to xpages, use response documents and use the comments formatting available from OneUI
• Xpages is not an option due to the amount of RichText data (screenshot pasted often)
  

So ...

• Am I wasting time trying to make something work that cannot be done?
• Are there better ways to doing this?
  

 Where are they located in the lsonline.info web site?

I cant find any :(

 Schedule for the day:

• OGS
• AD101 - IBM lotus designer - full speed ahead
• AD206 - Filthy rich user interfaces with Lotus Notes
• SHOW113 - Integrating domino data and applications on BB and Iphone
• AD110 - Unleash the power of Xpages

Missed session:

• AD205 Developing and deploying secure java applications for the notes client

OGS: Overall, I am quite disappointed at the OGS this year. For some reason, they talked about Quickr...which was very quiet last year. Then, they over-covered the lotus live and new features....which mean nothing to me....I'm on premise and dont have interest in SaaS. Lastly, the various customer stories werent all that insightful.

Barely no mention of future releases of Notes/Designer/domino.

AD101: The session quickly covered the improvements in 8.5.1 which was a review for me. Then, they covered a bunch of enhancements planned in Designer 8.5.2. I can't wait to get that puppy on my desktop! Few mentions:

• Packaging of custom controls
• html editor for pass-thru html
• new rich text editor in xpages
• improved data palette (it recognizes the source data types) and ability to reorder fields before inserting them to the page
• improved ui indicators in the xpages designer (cues to the type of data of the editbox)

AD206: This session focused too much on composite applications and was not for me. Left early. The presenting style was kind of dull.

SHOW113: Good session overall. Covered many details and tools to develop for BB and iphone. Unfortunately there were no demos, only screenshots. The contents seemed to cover a lot of material from John Wargo's book. The speaker was speaking a tad too fast.

AD110: This session should be retitled to "Crazy hardcore Xpages stuff!" Most of the material went over my head. The session showed some cool future features. For example, it will be possible to create new actions to add to events (simple actions menu). Also, you will be able to package custom controls into a jar file and share it among databases. I look forward to reviewing this session back home.


Product Showcase: So far it looks ok. Many vendors are being innovative in getting you to their booth. Some really cool raffles:

• 1 week at the olympics for two
• Amazon kindle
• TV's
• Wii's

 After little sleep on saturday night, it is time to start the marathon that lotusphere is. Having spend a good amount of time in the last week to organize my schedule, I was all set for Day 1.

My day consisted of:

• JMP104 JS, JSON, jQuery, and AJAX by S. Good
• JMP105 XML and web services by P. Calhoun
• SHOW112  How to build and Xpage app. from scratch
  
• JMP106  "kum ba yah" meets kick butt - the integration of office/symphony and notes

JMP104: This session scared me at the outset as it seemed a quite advanced session from the outset and because it was the first session of the week. However, I was pleasantly surprised of the simplicity of the session. Scott's style played a big part in making this session easy to follow. He provided a good amount of Javascript basics and outlined the differences between LS and JS which is important for many in the domino world (many only deal with @formula and LS). So a transition on the syntax is required. Having learnt JS in college/univ. the session provided a good refresher. Once Scott delved into JSON, I started catching on the syntax of the dojo library. I recall seeing syntax that made me go .... WTF is this....i've never seen that in JS. JSON allows to provide pseudo-objects on the fly instead of creating different arrays for different data and having to link the arrays together. Scott then followed to AJAX and jQuery. AJAX is one of those gems that should be used in any web application....but is not used by many due to its complexity. jQuery makes it easy to do AJAX (among other things). Also, the Xpages technology and the domino designer make it a breeze to enable AJAX.
What I've learnt from the session:

• jQuery is pretty neat and I will be looking into the framework when i get home.
• AJAX is a must for web applications. Users love that stuff. Web 2.0 is the way to go.

JMP105: Paul delivered a very comprehensive session on both XML and Web Services. It's quite impressive that he compressed 2 separate session into 1. The intro to XML was excellent. He discussed well-formed documents, validation, the different method to parsing (SAX or DOM) XML documents (network stream, file streams, in memory data). In the end, the thing to remember, XML is all about the data. He then covered some technologies related to the XMLmarkup such as XSLT, XML-FO, XPath. While not going deeply into each technology, he provided some examples on how these technologies can be used. He also provides many tools to test XML data against schemas, validate XML, and the creation of XML schemas. With the subject of Web services, Paul provided many great demos. He demonstrated how to create web providers and web consumers using the domino designer client. He also provided warnings and gotcha for developers running mixed environments. Basically, creating web service providers revolves around creating a class and returning data using functions. The WSDL is the definition of a web service like the javadoc or interface is to a java class. Paul recommends learning Java as the programming language for web services. the main reason is that coding web services in lotusscript ends up calling java. So for performance reasons......and for the extra capabilities...code the web services in Java....plain and simple. Based on the fact ive learn Java before lotuscript and javascript and other languages used in domino......Java is much more powerful and the data typing is a must.
What I've learnt from the session:

• XML is all about the data
• Code web services in Java
• Creating web services consumers is really easy in notes. Point to the WSDL and let designer do the work. Load the web service class in LS (use "xxxx") or load the web service class in a java agent (import xxx.xxx.xxx.*) and call the methods ....and the web service calls will occur without your knowledge
• When developing web service consumers, moving code from preproduction environments to production is a problem. It is recommended to code a lookup to a configuration document for the URI of the WSDL

SHOW112: If you've followed Declan Lynch's massive demo/tutorial on building the Xphone app and enjoyed it, this session was for you. The britts delivered a step-by-step demo of how to build a movie rental application. They cover xpages, custom controls, page layout javascript, validation, server-side javascript, dojo lightbox image displayer, dojo charting. This session is an excellent starter for people who wish to begin developing in Xpages and how to leverage some of their previous form development (computeWithForm).
What I've learnt from the session:

• XPages is not that bad (I guess if you're not a hardcore Lotuscript developer)
• Many @formulas are available in server-side javascript
• There are some areas of improvement for the designer client (Moving advanced validators to the validator tab, surfacing a database of custom controls to the designer client instead of repeating stuff over and over, making the drag and drop of field from a data source more functional by allowing more data types, etc etc)
• Xpages is awesome for AJAX and partial updates. More functional for the user
• Some stuff can only be done in the source mode which requires you to learn XML syntax for Xpages

JMP106: The integration between Notes and Office and symphony seems nice from what I saw. However, I could not get into the session. The flow didn't work for me. The examples were a bit repetitive. When John loaded Visual Studio, I was expecting security to swoop in and shut the session down :)

 Well, day zero is kind of a preparation for the storm waiting to happen in the next few days. Flights/hotel and registration occur on that day and theres a lot of things to take care of.

Coming from Canada, I decided to fly from Buffalo, NY as usual as im 30 mins away. The security and check-in was quick as usual despite what happened over the holidays. Unfortunately, my toronto friends didnt get the same treatment at Pearson (3 step security check including pat downs, turning on all electronic equipment etc etc. This apparently takes up to an hour...saddddddd)

Once landed in Orlando, my girlfriend and I went to the car rental and had a few good laughs about the ruckus going there. Our attendant gave a VIP car all prepped up to a non-vip customer....thus making her boss very iritated. The whole argument was in front of us and kind of funny as he was way too serious and she was a chuckle at the matter. As a result we got all kinds of discounts on our rental due to the time to process our order.

Once with the car, we trekked around orlando to grab a bite to eat and ended up at Cici's, just before Marker 4 on the 192. Once arrived at the hotel, it was time to checkin the hotel. Last year, I had a wicked studio as I registered late and went outside the conference hotel booking system. For the extra 20-30 bucks a night, it was well worth the convenience of a studio room. However, this year, I did go thru the conference hotel booking and the room isnt as nice. After getting in my room, we realize it was wayyyyy too far and asked for a room change. Being on the same floor as the main lobby is kind of nice. Although we dont have a view, the convenience is worth it.

The Lotusphere wireless is not strong this year as it doesnt even reach my room. So im stuck spending 8 bucks for shitty internet..

To close out my saturday, myself, my girlfriend and IBM'ers tried to go to ESPN...but the football playoffs made it impossible...so we hit up Bluezoo @ the dolphin. I must say that the place is as impressive as kimonos in its own right. The crab nachos with black been dressing is a must try. So are the sweetbreads with mushroom and olive flatbread with basil. For a main, I had the ahi tuna which was quite good. You must get it medium rare or rare though. The puree with it was phenomenal!


Day 0 == success :D

 Hi All

What is the discount for regular Lotusphere attendees who wish to write certification exams?


I saw that the discount is 75% for Business partners at http://lotusphereblog.com/blog/lotusphere.nsf/dx/75-discount-on-all-lotus-technical-certification-tests-for-all-ibm-business-partners-at-lotusphere-2010

However, I can't find the details for attendees. I would certainly take a 75% discount as I plan on writing the 3 notes dev exams.

Issue:

 
Ideajam entry:
http://ideajam.net/IdeaJam/P/ij.nsf/0/052B6BEA2400D130862576810060F89A?OpenDocument

Related entry: Programmable embedded views
http://ideajam.net/IdeaJam/P/ij.nsf/0/593E2BAD4859AF0586257393005964D6?OpenDocument

 

I am creating an agent that takes multiple attachments from a Rich Text Lite field and saves them locally, then uploads them to a new document in another database (1 attachment per document). 
Once the attachment is saved in the new document, I attempt to delete it from the source field by calling o.remove (o is a NotesEmbeddedOjbect).

This effectively removes the attachment from the document. However, the icon for the attachment remains and double clicking on it gives the error "Notes Item not Found" (the $File fields are empty, proving that the attachment is gone)

My code is effectively the same as this code snipped from the designer help
Dim doc As NotesDocument
Dim rtitem As Variant
Dim fileCount As Integer
Const MAX = 100000
fileCount = 0    
'...set value of doc...
Set rtitem = doc.GetFirstItem( "Body" )
If ( rtitem.Type = RICHTEXT ) Then
  Forall o In rtitem.EmbeddedObjects
    If ( o.Type = EMBED_ATTACHMENT ) _
    And ( o.FileSize > MAX ) Then
      fileCount = fileCount + 1
      Call o.ExtractFile _
      ( "c:\reports\newfile" & Cstr(fileCount) )
      Call o.Remove
      Call doc.Save( True, True )
    End If
  End Forall
End If 

Has anyone seen this? Workaround to wipe those pesky attachment icons?

 
Recently, I modified the Desktop policy to disable the setting "Disable type-ahead for all name fields and use the Notes Basic type-ahead". Unfortunately, it does not seem to be applying properly on desktops even tho it is set to enforce, and prevent changes.

As a workaround, you can deploy the following notes.ini parameter

$DISABLE_TYPEDOWN=1

This ini parameter is documented at
http://www-10.lotus.com/ldd/dominowiki.nsf/dx/ibm-lotus-notes-8-recent-contacts-and-type-ahead-features-faqs

 I recently blogged that I am moving to a development role on the Lotus platform and I look forward to updating applications and delivering results for my client. This week, my manager asked me to come up with a strategy for internal web development. This request was quite timely as Xpages just came out and we are running 851. Furthermore, IBM released documentation around the OneUI v2 framework (http://www-12.lotus.com/ldd/doc/oneuidoc/docpublic/index.htm)

Based on the technology available and the need to be able to whip out websites quickly for internal communication, I will propose to

• build a mini-portal/landing ground for internal apps
• Use OneUI v2 as it looks quite nice and can be extended with theming
• Transform readonly/communication databases to be web-enabled
• Retrofit applications as new requests come in

What is your strategy?
Are you using Xpages?
How do you arrange multiple applications over the web?
Are you using a consistent user interface?
What are you doing for mobile users (Blackberry/iPhones)?