Requirements
There's general consensus about the following:
[Magnolia needs] a formal definition for a type of content [...] including the fields that type may contain, and its relationships to other types of content.
Based on this definition, other things can be created with little or no work such as a content app, an editing dialog, and REST endpoints.
—via Content Types
Initial action plan / Spike 0
Based on a registry on one hand, and starting off with a field-based model on the other hand, we could start implementing a minimal user story with few concrete actions.
Status
MGNLCT-9 - Getting issue details... STATUS
MGNLCT-10 - Getting issue details... STATUS
MGNLCT-11 - Getting issue details... STATUS
MGNLUI-4246 - Getting issue details... STATUS
MGNLUI-4238 - Getting issue details... STATUS
MGNLREST-93 - Getting issue details... STATUS
PRs were created, yet they're not deemed to be in a "productized" state atm. Still a bit too reminiscent of the previous PoC efforts.
1. Configuration
Registry
At this stage, the format does not matter as much as what we're going to do with it.
It's also unclear why our YAML format should be considered a misfit—we've been pushing it all around the place—or for what use cases it falls short, concretely.
Either way, Magnolia needs awareness of content types. Covering that with a ContentTypeRegistry
is a natural starting point, implying a ContentTypeDefinition
as well.
With Magnolia 5.4+ config & resource-loading APIs, this is trivial to set up. We get significant value out of the box:
- light-module conventions
- visibility inside the definitions app
- problem reporting
- familiar YAML format
Should we hit the wall with the registry or format, and get an alternative on par with benefits above, nothing is set in stone. It just allows us to move on with downstream technical challenges.
Status
CT01. Pick ContentTypeRegistry
+ ContentTypeDefinition
into a new module
MGNLCT-8 - Getting issue details... STATUS
- Module will sit above core & config, but below UI
- Move registry <-> config-source bindings to the new module class
- tentatively YAML-only to start with
Definition outlook
—what does a content-type consist of?
This is also a never-ending topic. We should start small, and add more aspects/features as we go.
As per the high-level vision at the top of this page, the most prominent part of a content-type is its model, its fields.
In fact, there is potential for many existing Magnolia features to shift under the umbrella of content types, eventually.
Content type all-the-things :allthethings:
Just for reference, here's a non-exhaustive list of aspects a content type could specify:
- data source (envisioning an evolution of content-connectors, without the Vaadin bits)
- kind
- coordinates
- workspace / table / collection name
- node types
- model / fields
- relationships, 1-to-1, 1-to-many, etc.
- evolution, content version-handling
- locales
- see MGNLUI-3616 - Getting issue details... STATUS
- folder-support
- tagging
- versioning
- publication
- personalization
- renditions / URI bindings / previews
- cache policies
- naming / id strategy
- ownership model / security
- consistency model
- all consistent against latest schema (hence content migration)
- vs. mixed-model version w/ compatibility
- ...
2. Fields
Modeling
As foreseen, content-types are shifting upstream of apps, that is upstream of any UI/UX consideration.
On the one hand, modeling purists advocate for a strict, dry representation of the model, with almost exclusively primitive property types.
On the other hand, Magnolia has always provided users with pretty loose modeling, driven by field-definitions. The author experience comes first, the data model is deduced from it.
There may be some middle-ground there. With few key improvements, we can keep our familiar field-definitions, while decoupling them from UI/UX considerations.
Again, nothing set in stone. This in turn helps progressing towards generation of content apps and endpoints.
Status
We start simple, with a plain map of named fields. We make FieldDefinitions less UI/UX-bound / more UI-agnostic.
CT12. Infer field-types vs. types both ways
MGNLCT-10 - Getting issue details... STATUS
- setting "fieldType": FieldDefinition impls have hard-coded types (already)
- setting "type": infer a simple field type upon form creation (dialog, app)
CT13. Detach Validators from Vaadin
MGNLUI-4246 - Getting issue details... STATUS
- boilerplate: must implement:
- Vaadin Validator
- Magnolia ValidatorFactory
- Magnolia ValidatorDefinition
- switch towards standard Bean Validation (well supported by Vaadin too)
- provide config short-hands for standard bean validators (max-length, range, etc.)
- validator-registry?
Under the radar (unranked)
- Support semi-structured content types (leveraging the content-editor)
- Defining & resolving references to other content-types (leaving linking out first)
- Groups of fields and/or 1:n relationships
UI bits
In addition to making fields more UI-agnostic, we seek to maintain presentation flexibility on app & form level.
Under the radar
CT11. Once CT gives us a flat list of fields, layout can be configured on app level
MGNLUI-4245 - Getting issue details... STATUS
- ditch
TabDefinitions
in favor of an optional layout config
3. Data source
CT21. Reuse automatic workspace creation
MGNLCT-9
-
Getting issue details...
STATUS
MGNLCT-11
-
Getting issue details...
STATUS
CT22. Connect an existing app or sub-app descriptor to a ContentTypeDefinition
MGNLUI-4247
-
Getting issue details...
STATUS
- experimented in Sang's PoC, via plain contentType reference id
Status
To be discussed / defined.
DEV-617 - Getting issue details... STATUS
4. Content apps
App generation
We seem to have consensus against re-introducing definition builders maintained by hand (like those we reverted before 5.0)
- A. Either verbosely build/nest configured definitions w/ plain constructors (no new def code)
- B. And/or we give a shot at leveraging Sasha's code-generation efforts for this
Status
CT23. Generate apps on-the-fly, upon app startup
MGNLUI-4238 - Getting issue details... STATUS
- AppDescriptorRegistry listens/delegates fluently to the ContentTypeRegistry
- broadly speaking, CTR is a source for apps
- resolve a placeholder DefinitionMetadata
- use a dynamic DefinitionProvider building the app on-the-fly from the type
Options under the radar
- Support a new, less-boilerplate app descriptor type, conveying higher-level semantics, leveraging content-types
- Definition-less app on the fly; dynamically built based on CT definition features.
- Either way, both would cause major changes to app sub-components (e.g. workbench, actions, all presenters heavily relying on defs atm; views hardly usable standalone)
App defaults
- yet to formalize config patterns, actions, columns, labelling...
- crud, publishing, import-export
- different stock apps have different flavors of actionbar section availability
- even the groovy generator is not fully "canonical", vs. M5 UX guidelines
Status
To be formalized.
Under the radar
- Composing mixin configuration defaults per content-types capabilities
5. Consuming content
REST endpoint defaults
Status
We have a productized, JCR-based, basic delivery endpoint. Currently this is just one "global" endpoint, taking the workspace name as path parameter.
Therefore at the moment, there's no such thing as one endpoint per content type (might come again later), so nothing extra to register.
MGNLREST-93 - Getting issue details... STATUS
Options under the radar
- Side-by-side endpoint implementations for CT-based vs. JCR-based.
- Single endpoint registrations (more content-semantic APIs than with the generic one)
8 Comments
Christopher Zimmermann
Thanks Mika, this looks like a good and practical path forwards.
Viet Nguyen
We had this issue which would be useful when you implementing Content type support because by default you would not be able to publish it properly and version it properly. Please read below use case, problems and solutions for more detail.
cc: Christoph Meier for documentation update as customer suggestion.
Versioning and publication with different nodetypes
-- from SUPPORT-9207
Use case
Customer has a custom app which are using custom node types as below:
Similar to our mgnl:page, mgnl:folder and mgnl:component, mgnl:area types - Here is his JCR content structure example
https://jira.magnolia-cms.com/secure/attachment/49049/jcrStructureExample.png
Problem with activation
Solution for publication
The configuration point which could help you include your custom nodetypes into publication process is "itemTypes" under your activation command. An example is here
In the example, when a customer publish a personalized content node, its 'componentVariants' get published also.
So in this case, you would be expected to include your custom nodetypes into your 'itemTypes' property of the command, please use comma separated format without any space.
Problem with versioning
When I use itemTypes with empty value and change the contentBlock to be child of mgnl:content, all nodes are published (need to use the recursive=true also for bulletins).
But the versions are not good for me:
Solution for versioning
Referencing to restoreAllChildren function of 'RestorePreviousVersionCommand' class here https://nexus.magnolia-cms.com/content/sites/magnolia.public.sites/ref/5.7.1/magnolia-core/apidocs/index.html, you can see that you need to set 'itemTypes' in that command parameters and setting 'parentNodeTypeOnly' to false - which is set to 'true' by default in '/modules/pages/apps/pages/subApps/browser/actions/restorePreviousVersion@parentNodeTypeOnly'
Finally it works with this itemTypes: mgnl:contentNode,mgnl:metaData,mgnl:resource,contentBlock
--> thus extending the default of this with our custom type.
Customer suggested us to update our documentation for this use case
Christoph Meier
A quite complex topic Viet Nguyen.
I am not yet sure which doc pages and how to update.
As I said, a really complex case - I have to think about more in depth.
Probably would be already worth to describe exactly this "use case" - as it is written here - but with more details, and with the solution and some explanations ...
Could be in the
WIKI
.And since this comment is on the Content Types page ... you are aware of the fact that we will release The Magnolia Content Types module with Magnolia-6.0, right?
Viet Nguyen
As long as we successfully implemented Content Type theme, content editors would be able to define and manage different content types themselves. Then lots of content (data) using those types would be on production.
So we need to have a proper solution to support publishing and versioning for their custom content types without manually or customization. Then we won't need to add any documentation.
If we didn't have any out of the box working content type suite yet, Mikaël Geljić please provide us a clean and clear way on how to achieve it, my provided steps are just manually changing the configuration points which is not so convenience if a content editor have to do so many steps for his new content type.
Mikaël Geljić
The only difference between
mgnl:content
andmgnl:contentNode
is that the first one ismgnl:versionable
and the latter is not. This means contentNodes are "typically" versioned with their parent (without any recursion).Yes, this is indeed similar to pages vs. areas/components, or Stories app's compositions vs. blocks (which looks very similar to what they are doing btw). Your node-type assumptions are correct.
In fact, we are taking the same assumptions for Content Types: the root "model" produces
mgnl:content
while sub-models (composite or multiple property groups within that model) result inmgnl:contentNodes
.So this is likely *not an issue for Content Types to fix, but rather for versioning/publication*.
We need to recollect the rationale why parentNodeTypeOnly is true by default, and whether
mgnl:contentNode
could be present in itemTypes by default. (cc Roman Kovařík)I expect the type-checks to be done with
javax.jcr.Node#isNodeType
, so there should be no need for additional configuration for custom sub-types.With that said, can we move the discussion back to the support ticket?
Thanks for reporting and for the thorough investigation Viet Nguyen.
Viet Nguyen
So
→ No please, our support ticket has been fixed by providing him with correct configuration for his use case, we are not trying to go further in supporting him this 'corner case'.
However if we are trying to support Content Types out of the box, we would have to consider other aspects such as versioning and publishing like below:
→ We are not mentioning a 'fix' in Content Types, we are discussing a solution on how would we support. For example:
Mikaël Geljić
Ok, copy that. Exactly, I'd aim at the second solution then. Let's open a MAGNOLIA ticket.
Viet Nguyen
Ticket created in MAGNOLIA-7415 - Getting issue details... STATUS