Content
1st. call (Mo., 3. June 2013)
Agenda:
- Get to know each other
- Discuss & understand the aim of project
- Create Roadmap
Summery:
In the first call we discussed the project idea in more detail.
The basic idea was enabling users to create MFI specific templates for documents they often need.
As there are more use cases for repeatedly reports like documents (e.g. SMS), we prefer to make this feature a bit more generic.
Typically u have a template (text) containing keys and u provide a map for substitution.
The idea now is to substitute the keys in the template basically depending on the keys.
Example:
U only have to provide a client to substitute the key $client.clientName with the name of the client and the key $client.repaymentSchedules with the requested list.
ToDo:
E-Mail: ask for examples of user generated documents (Michael)
look at existing report tools: http://www.eclipse.org/birt/phoenix/, http://www.pentaho.com/, http://www.crystalreports.com/ (Andreas)
look at Java Introspection API (reflection) (Andreas)
program an example for an template merging a simple placeholder (Andreas)
propose and program a REST API for templates (Andreas)
Notes to myself: setup a blog
2nd. call (Di., 12. June 2013)
Agenda:
- Go through code at github?
- Discuss questions below
- Plan next step
Questions:
- There are no unit tests at all (?), so i had to set up the test environment. I made an extra testContext.xml
because jndi didnt want me to access the datasource. Is that ok? better approach? - What about multitenancy? Do we have to safe the creator?
- May i put .metadata to .gitignore? (or why isn't it on the list)
- Discuss usage (workflow) of user generated templates
Summary:
After i told about my activities over the past week we tried to focus on the usage of the user generated template
functionality to get an idea, how the interface may look like. By that we figured out, that we thought of different ways
how the service should acquire required data.
My (Andreas) thoughts were to post data to the service. Michael thought of an automatic gaining data approach (e.g. from database).
Actually there are usecases for both possibilities. Thats why we implement both of them.
We decided to declaire an advanced functionality, where u can define keys yourself (requires description where the service should get the resource).
ToDo:
One more try to get realworld examples of user generated documents (Michael)
Define and implement REST interface (Andreas)
Integrationtest for usage (Andreas)
Compare template engines providing introspection-functionality (Andreas)
3rd. call (Th., 27. June 2013)
Agenda:
- Discuss questions below
- Plan next step
Querstions:
- Which Tempalte Engine?
Summery:
After research and evaluation of Serverside Template Engines we decided to use mustache.java.
It is not only used by twitter and netflix it is also the reimplementation of the mature mustache template language and under active development.
It seperates logic and representation so user can concentrate on a simple syntax while creating templates for e.g. documents.
Compared to other template engines, it does not interfear in the xml/html tags, which allows us to combine a WYSIWYG-Editor for better user experience.
Last but not least it supports reflection, which is an criteria for acceptance.
ToDo:
Dive into mustache.java and start implementing templating functionality.
4th. call (Mo., 1. July 2013)
We skiped it.
5th. call (Th., 04. July 2013)
Agenda:
- Review current state
- Plan next step
Querstions:
- Does sample data match mifos?
Summery:
After i didn't get to manage my contribution to github in time, wo could not go through the code.
But we discussed in addition to the basic functionality of replacing template key words with data,
the usage and API to request the template service.
Further we had a look on the sample data we want to use for a showcase.
ToDo:
Create a concept for usage of the template engine.
6th. call (We., 10. July 2013)
Agenda:
- Discuss usage of template API (Example with curl):
GET ALL TEMPLATES:
curl -k --user mifos -i -H "Accept: application/json" -H "Content-Type: application/json" https://localhost:8443/mifosng-provider/api/v1/templates?tenantIdentifier=default
POST (create) TEMPLATE:
curl -X POST -i -H "Accept: application/json" -H "Content-type: application/json" -k --user mifos -d '{"text":"<html><header><title>This is title</title></header><body>Hello {{world}}</body></html>","name":"foo","metadata":{"client":"client.url"}}' https://localhost:8443/mifosng-provider/api/v1/templates?tenantIdentifier=default
M> may be instead of "metadata" we could call this... I don't know, "loaders" ? "mapp(ing/ers)" ? What will {"client":"client.url"}}' actually do?
GET BY ID (insert id!):
curl -k --user mifos -i -H "Accept: application/json" -H "Content-Type: application/json" https://localhost:8443/mifosng-provider/api/v1/templates/ <ID> ?tenantIdentifier=default
M> don't you want to see "foo" (template name) in the URL for this one here somewhere? else how to know which one? and instead <ID> wouldn't it be ?id=123?
GET MERGED TEMPLATE (insert id!):
curl -k --user mifos -X POST -i -H "Accept: text/html" -H "Content-type: application/json" -d '{"world":"Template"}' https://localhost:8443/mifosng-provider/api/v1/templates/ <ID> ?tenantIdentifier=default
RETURNS:
<html><header><title>This is title</title></header><body>Hello Template</body></html>
- Have a look at the code