This page is the second part of the My first content app tutorial and describes how to configure and create a basic Bookshelf, a Magnolia content app. The configuration is done using Magnolia content types – formal definitions for types of content in Magnolia including the properties the type may contain and its relationships to other types of content.
Getting Magnolia
For development and testing you need a running instance of Magnolia. In this tutorial, we suppose that it is installed in a directory called magnolia
.
Creating the bookshelf
light module
Magnolia light modules usually define page, area and component templates and many more things. In this tutorial we use a light module called bookshelf
to create a content app. The module contains both a definition of content types and the app descriptor.
- Open a terminal.
- Go to the
light-modules
folder of your Magnolia installation: Run the following command:
mgnl create-light-module bookshelf
The command creates the bookshelf
light module.
Creating the app
Change to the bookshelf
folder and enter the following command:
mgnl create-app bookshelf-app
The commands creates the apps
and contentTypes
subfolders in the light module and adds the bookshelf-app.yaml
file to both of them.
The bookshelf-app.yaml
file in the apps
subfolder is an app descriptor, while the bookshelf-app.yaml
file in the contentTypes
subfolder contains a content type definition for the app. In the next steps, you modify these files to meet the design requirements for the Bookshelf app.
Please note that the mgnl create-app bookshelf-app
command also creates a new workspace called bookshelf-app
. However, as the Bookshelf app must interact with the books
workspace, the name of the workspace is changed to books
below.
Customizing the content type definition
In the contentTypes
folder, open the bookshelf-app.yaml
and replace its content with the following:
datasource: workspace: books rootPath: / namespaces: lib: https://www.magnolia-travel.com/jcr/1.0/lib autoCreate: true model: nodeType: lib:book properties: - name: authors - name: ed type: Boolean - name: title - name: description - name: publisher - name: publish_date type: Date - name: isbn13
- In the
datasource
section (lines 1-6), you define how content type items are persisted. For more details see the Content type Data source definition page. - In the
model
section (lines 8-19), you define the node type and the properties of the new content item for the Bookshelf app.
For the properties, the default String
type is used when no other type is supplied. The definition of the Bookshelf app requires that we change the type in case of the ed
and publish_date
properties:
- Line 13: Set the type of the
ed
property toBoolean
, since it is more appropriate in regard to the values the system can store (true
,false
). - Line 18: Set the data type of the
publish_date
property toDate
so that the value would be stored in the JCR as calendar object.
For more details, see the Content type Model definition page.
Customizing the app descriptor
In the apps
subfolder, open the bookshelf-app.yaml
and make sure it contains only the following two lines:
!content-type-m5:bookshelf-app name: bookshelf-app
- Line 1: The app descriptor instructs the app generator to construct the app from the
bookshelf-app
content type definition.
Note the presence of them5
suffix in the content type directive. For the time being, our app will be based on UI 5 definitions. - Line 2: You give the app the name
bookshelf-app
, under which the app is known to other resources and systems in Magnolia.
Check the app in the Definitions app
After saving the changes, you can check in the Definitions app that the app's definitions have been loaded by Magnolia.
Starting the app
Magnolia adds a tile for your new app to the App launcher automatically when registering the app. However, to make the tile appear in the App launcher, you must first restart your Magnolia session once by logging out and logging in again. For further details see App launcher layout.
To start using the app, login to Magnolia again and click the bookshelf-app tile in the App launcher.
i18n message keys and the Name, Title and Description labels
The magnolia-ui-framework
module already contains several generic i18n message keys whose values are applied as labels in the UI of the Bookshelf app. You will create new label values in Adding an i18n message bundle on the third page of the tutorial.
Congratulations! The content app is up and running now and the editors could already start using by cataloging new books in it.
Continue to the last page of this tutorial, where you fine-tune this basic app to its final form.