Extending Content Delivery Storage in SDL WEB 8.5 - Part 3

In the last blog, we saw what happened when we publish a new component, it only calls the create method, but when we re-publish an item it first calls the remove method and then create.

Remove Method

public void remove(int publicationId, int componentId, int componentTemplateId, ComponentPresentationTypeEnum componentPresentationType)

throws StorageException

{

log.debug("Custom storage remove Method");

super.remove(publicationId, componentId, componentTemplateId, componentPresentationType);

log.debug("Custom storage remove Method :- "+componentId);

 

}

Re-Publish an item

As you can see when I re-published an item, we have remove method invoked first and then create method. Next, is un-publish an item and see how it works/ in what sequence.

Un-Publish an Item

When we publish a new item only create method is called, re-publishing will call the remove method and then create and finally in un-publish only remove method is called.   

In the last two blogs, we learned how to set up and configure the project to build storage extension and Publishing a new item and in this blog, we saw other functionalities as well and how they are invoked, in what sequence/order, with this approach we can add/update/remove DCPs in custom storage e:g SOLR, ElasticSearch, MongoDB, etc.

This data can further be used for analytics and for third-party applications.

Happy Coding and Keep Sharing !!!

Extending Content Delivery Storage in SDL WEB 8.5 - Part 2

In the previous blog, we set up the project and configured all the required config and based on that we published a DCP and saw custom logs are available which means everything is working fine.

Today we are going to read the content of DCP and will see how Storage Extension work when we publish, re-publish and un-publish an item.

The Content is available in the form of Bytes and we need to convert that, below is the code snippet that will allow you to access the DCP content in your custom code.

public void create(ComponentPresentation itemToCreate, ComponentPresentationTypeEnum componentPresentationType)

throws StorageException

{

          super.create(itemToCreate,componentPresentationType);

          log.debug("Custom Code Create Method COMID :- " + itemToCreate.getComponentId());

          log.debug("Custom Storage create Method:- "+ itemToCreate.getContent());

          log.debug(String.valueOf(itemToCreate.getComponentId()));

          byte[] dcpComponent= itemToCreate.getContent();

          try

          {

                  componentPresentation = new String(dcpComponent,"UTF-8");

                  log.debug("Custom Storage create DCP :- " + componentPresentation);

          }

          catch (UnsupportedEncodingException ex)

          {

                  log.error("Custom Storage create Unsupported " + ex);

          }

}

DCP content

Publish a new component and in the deployer log file, you will see the DCP content but what will happen when we re-publish the same component or un-publish this. How we are going to manage that in the custom code, will see in the next blog, until then.

Happy Coding and Keep Sharing !!!

Extending Content Delivery Storage in SDL WEB 8.5 - Part 1

In this blog, We are going to extend the Storage layer in SDL WEB 8.5 but first, we need to set up the project and will make sure that the custom code interacts with the default process.

Pre-Requisites

1. Eclipse or you can use your favorite JAVA IDE. You can also follow my previous blog on how to set up the Project in Eclipse and generate custom JAR. [here]
2. JAVA 8
3. Default SDL JARs

We can customize the way existing items are stored by the Storage Layer using the DAO "Data Access Object" implementation pattern. We also need to extend JPAComponentPresentationDAO and implement ComponentPresentationDAO and this will allow us to extend the Storage Layer for Dynamic Component Presentation.

Step 1. Create a JAVA class file and add the following Namespaces.

import com.tridion.broker.StorageException;
import com.tridion.storage.ComponentPresentation;
import com.tridion.storage.dao.ComponentPresentationDAO;
import com.tridion.storage.persistence.JPAComponentPresentationDAO;
import com.tridion.storage.util.ComponentPresentationTypeEnum;
import java.io.UnsupportedEncodingException;
import java.util.Collection;
import javax.persistence.EntityManager;
import javax.persistence.EntityManagerFactory;
import org.springframework.context.annotation.Scope;
import org.springframework.stereotype.Component;
import org.slf4j.Logger;
import org.slf4j.LoggerFactory;

Step 2.  Extends the class JPAComponentPresentationDAO and implement  ComponentPresentationDAO. We also need to insert a @Component and a @scope("prototype") statement between import statements and class definition and the following line of code.

Custom Storage Extension

Step 3. Create a storage DAO bundle config file.

Step 4. Copy this config file in the Deployer config folder and open the cd_storage config file in your favorite editor and add the following element.

Edit storage config file.

Step 5. Copy the Custom JAR file in the deployer and restart the deployer.

Custom JAR.

Step 6. We are done with code and configuration, now we need to publish the DCP and check the logs.

Logs

In the log file, we can see the custom log is available and it's returning the Component ID which means the code is interacting with the default process.


In the next blog, we will see the difference between other Methods, how our code will change on Publishing, Unpublishing and re-publishing and how to read DCP content, Until then.

Happy Coding and Keep Sharing !!!

Custom Deployer Extension in SDL WEB 8.5 - Purge Cache Part - 2

In the previous post, we set up the custom deployer project, discussed its requirement and the use of deployer extension. Today, we are going to continue to use that same project and implement a real-life use-case.

Background:- In our current project we are using SDL WEB 8.5 and .NET DXA 1.8 and to improve the performance of the web application we implemented the custom caching with cache expires after 15 mins, but the business team has this requirement that they want to see the content "Real-time", no delay whenever the publish any new content.

Based on their requirement we came up with this approach and decided to write a custom deployer extension. So, whenever the author publish the page(s), the deployer extension will trigger and clear the cache of that particular page based on the URL extracted from PageMetaData.

In the below code snippet we are reading the page relative URL retrieved from PageMetaData and with the help of string manipulation we've created the absolute URL and based on the Query String parameter we trigger the code to purge the cache. Check the HTTP response code it should be 200 in the logs and refresh the web page to check the latest content.

 // This is called once for each Transport Package that is deployed.  
      @Override  
      public void process(TransportPackage data) throws ProcessingException   
      {  
            log.debug("This is custom logs");  
            String USER_AGENT = "Mozilla/5.0";  
            log.debug("PublicationId : " + String.valueOf(data.getProcessorInstructions().getPublicationId().getItemId()));  
           try  
           {  
            log.debug("Custom Code :- Entered in the try block");  
            PageMetaData pageFile = (PageMetaData)data.getMetaDataFile("Pages");  
            log.debug("Custom code :- Reading PageMetaData");  
            if (pageFile != null)  
      {  
        List<Page> pages = pageFile.getPages();  
        for ( Page page : pages )  
        {  
             log.debug("Custom code :- For loop to get the page url ");  
             log.debug("http://localhost:92"+page.getURLPath()+"?ClearCache=true");   
             String URL = "http://localhost:92"+page.getURLPath()+"?ClearCache=true";  
             URL obj = new URL(URL);  
             HttpURLConnection con = (HttpURLConnection) obj.openConnection();  
             con.setConnectTimeout(5000);  
             log.debug("Custom code :- timeout");  
             con.setRequestMethod("GET");  
             con.setRequestProperty("User-Agent", USER_AGENT);  
             int responseCode = con.getResponseCode();  
             log.debug("Response Code : " + responseCode);  
             if (responseCode == HttpURLConnection.HTTP_OK)  
             {  
              log.debug("Custom Deployer, Cache has been removed and the responseCode is : " + responseCode + "- for URL " + URL);  
             }  
             log.debug("Page ID :" + String.valueOf(page.getId().getItemId()));  
        }  
      }  
            log.debug("Purging is done !! Please check the web page!!");  
           }  
           catch (Exception e)  
     {  
        log.error("Could not get path for publication.", e);  
        return;  
     }  
  }  

Logs generated by the deployer.

Deployer Logs

With the help of the deployer extension, we were able to achieve and deliver the real-time experience and still managing the performance of the site using cache.


Happy Coding and Keep Sharing !!!

Custom Deployer Extension in SDL WEB 8.5 Part - 1

Today, we are going to see how to extend the default SDL Tridion deployment functionality, using Custom Deployer Extension. Before we move forward and start building/set up the project let's first understand the use of Deployer Extension. When a user publishes content, the Content Deployer unpacks the incoming Transport Package and processes its transport instructions and we can extend the default behavior of the Content Deployer by creating a custom Module and adding it to a Step, or by extending an existing Module.

Deployer Extension:- 

• Deployer Extension is used to inject additional functionality in the default SDL Tridion deployment process. 
• If you want to implement your custom logic/data. "Event System might be useful here as well 🤔 We need to be absolutely sure about it".
• If you want to use some specific data/info which is only available at the time of deployment.   
• Based on JAVA.
• You can extend the default behavior of the Content Deployer by creating a custom Module and adding it to a Step, or by extending an existing Module.

In order to set up the JAVA project for the Deployer Extension, I have used Eclipse IDE, default JARs provided by SDL and JAVA 8. 

First, we need to configure the JAVA project using Eclipse.

1. Click on File --> New --> Other Project and then select Java Project and click Next.

Create New JAVA Project

2. Enter the Project Name

Enter the Project Name.

3. Create a new folder called "lib" which will contain all the JARs.

Create new Folder lib

4. Copy all the JARs in lib, you can find all the default JAR files in the deployer microservice lib folder. Once copied then we need to Add the Build PATH.

Add JARs Build Path

5 Next, is create a Java package and then create a CLASS file.

Create a new Java Package

Create a New Class

6. Start Importing all the Namespace that's required in order to extend the deployer.

Tridion Default Namespaces.

7. Next is we must implement the abstract method  Module.process(TransportPackage)

 package com.tridion.deployer.extension;  
 import org.slf4j.Logger;  
 import org.slf4j.LoggerFactory;  
 import com.tridion.configuration.Configuration;  
 import com.tridion.configuration.ConfigurationException;  
 import com.tridion.deployer.Module;  
 import com.tridion.deployer.ProcessingException;  
 import com.tridion.deployer.Processor;  
 import com.tridion.transport.transportpackage.TransportPackage;  
 public class PurgeCache extends Module {  
      protected static Logger log = LoggerFactory.getLogger(PurgeCache.class);  
        
      public PurgeCache(Configuration config, Processor processor) throws ConfigurationException  
      {  
           super(config,processor);  
      }  
      // This is called once for each Transport Package that is deployed.  
      @Override  
      public void process(TransportPackage data) throws ProcessingException   
      {  
            log.debug("This is custom logs");  
            int publicationId =data.getProcessorInstructions().getPublicationId().getItemId();  
            log.debug("PublicationId : " + String.valueOf(publicationId));  
      }  
 }  

That's it Export this into a JAR and next is the configuration in the deployer_config.xml of Deployer Microservice. "Don't forget to restart the service".

Click Export

Click Jar file and then Next

Custom Deployer Extension JAR file is ready

Finally, we need to deploy the custom JAR in the deployer microservice lib folder and open the deployer_config.xml file in your favorite editor add the below configuration, save the file Don't forget to take a backup before you start editing.

 <Step Factory="com.sdl.delivery.deployer.steps.TridionExecutableStepFactory" Id="PurgeCacheSteps">  
   <Module Type="PurgeCache" Class="com.tridion.deployer.extension.PurgeCache">  
   </Module>  
 </Step>  

 We also need to edit the logback.xml

 <logger name="com.tridion.deployer.extension">  
     <appender-ref ref="rollingDeployerLog"/>  
 </logger>  

Let's do some publishing and see if everything is working fine. Ideally, we should be able to see the logs entries. If you see the custom logs in the log file that means your custom code is interesting with default deployment process and you've built the extension successfully.

Log File

In the next blog, we will use the deployer extension with a very interesting use-case, until then.

Happy Coding and Keep Sharing !!!