Introduction

The "jcr system view" xml format is difficult to work with in typical team source control cases, such as diffing and merging.
The xml format is hard to read and perform manual edits on which is not an uncommon task in project development.  MAGNOLIA-6683 - Getting issue details... STATUS .

JCR document view

Mikaël Geljić: JCR specifies the Document View, specifically providing a human-readable serialization. This should be fairly easy to work with, diff/merge.

This format is legit bootstrap and works in Magnolia / Jackrabbit out of the box.

website.sportstation.documentView.xml

 works out of the box

 better diff

 still XML with meta information (can be omitted/filtered out?)

YAML

 same format for light development 

 nice diff

/ no meta information, easy to read (but this should not be a replacement for XML bootstrap files, just an easy to alternative, right?)

What do we need?

Export

Node → Raw view → YAML 

1. allow to export non registry items as YAML
2. implement helper for importing yaml content into a workspace
   
   • slightly custom n2b transformer (OR a custom node wrapper?) due to the node type information (JCR properties are filtered out by default)
     • nodeName(mgnl:page) vs nodeName/jcrNodeType=mgnlPage

Import

YAML → Reader → Map → create the content via Node API 

 Performance? Do we care or it's only for "light" content?

Implementation

N2B

• N2B Transformer specifies getChildren() method but filtering of properties is hardcoded. We need at least jcr:primaryType and jcr:uuid for export (and we probably want to support all of those). A solution is to introduce N2BTransformer.getProperties() in the same fashion as getChildren().

DefinitionRawViewToYamlConverter

• Components 0 and 00
  • YAML reader considers both '0' and '00' as number 0

  • Resulting in only one of those nodes added

  • Solution: enclose non simple propeties into apostrophes: 

  • Resulting in only one of those nodes added

    '0':
       hideTeaserImage: true
    '00':
       headline: 'Careers'

• Data types
  • YAML supports numbers, dates and binaries
    • dates has to be in certain format

    • !!binary R0lGODlhDAAMAIQAAP//9/X=

      • SnakeYaml reads it as byte[]
    • explicit vs. implicit annotation

      • !!str 2002-04-28

Commands

jcr:name: page
Binary: !!binary QmluYXJ5
Date: 2017-03-09T10:27:58.617+01
Double: 1.0
Name: !Name 'mgnl:contentNode'
Path: !Path '/page'
Reference: !Reference 'cafebabe-cafe-babe-cafe-babecafebabe'
URI: !URI '/page'
WeakReference: !WeakReference 'cafebabe-cafe-babe-cafe-babecafebabe'
jcr:primaryType: !Name 'mgnl:contentNode'
jcr:uuid: '76207274-03f9-4aca-b587-5cfc2ecd1763'
mgnl:created: 2017-03-09T10:27:58.615+01
mgnl:createdBy: 'anonymous'
mgnl:lastModified: 2017-03-09T10:27:58.615+01
mgnl:lastModifiedBy: 'anonymous'
propertyName: 'propertyValue'
'00':
  jcr:primaryType: !Name 'mgnl:content'
  jcr:uuid: '20cfdb2b-fb33-45f2-b5e4-d8d90455d938'
  mgnl:created: 2017-03-09T10:27:58.619+01
  mgnl:createdBy: 'anonymous'
  mgnl:lastModified: 2017-03-09T10:27:58.619+01
  mgnl:lastModifiedBy: 'anonymous'
'0':
  childProperty: ['child:PropertyValue1', 'childPropertyValue2']
  jcr:primaryType: !Name 'mgnl:content'
  jcr:uuid: '1a481550-e2f8-402f-8d15-044c5157a598'
  mgnl:created: 2017-03-09T10:27:58.620+01
  mgnl:createdBy: 'anonymous'
  mgnl:lastModified: 2017-03-09T10:27:58.620+01
  mgnl:lastModifiedBy: 'anonymous'