Comparing Dates and Time Zones

Date and time calculations are a bit tricky in UCM. Unlike regular numbers, dates and times cannot be calculated or compared to one another directly.

Comparing numbers is easy, consider this example:

<$if 6 gt 5$>
This code is always true!
<$endif$>

Dates and times cannot be compared this way unless they are converted to numbers, using toInteger(). Unfortunately there is no way to turn that number back into a date, so it's not too useful. A better way to manipulate timestamps without converting them is to simply "parse" them, using the parseDate() function.

<$myBirthday = "5/3/77"$>
<$if parseDate(myBirthday) gt parseDate("18/09/1970")$>
I was born after Hendrix died, on <$myBirthday$>!
<$endif$>

Parsing a date depends on the format of the timestamp. There are many different formats for timestamps so you'll need to figure out which ones are used by your UCM installation. The system locale decides how to format and recognise timestamps. For example, the UK locale uses dates in d/M/yy format, whereas the US locale is M/d/y. The system locale and timezone are chosen when UCM is first installed. Users can choose to use their own locale and change the way dates and languages are displayed just for them. UCM will recalculate timestamps and present the correct timezone for the user's locale whenever they look at a date, but continue to store dates according to the system locale. Any dates that are entered need to follow the (user) locale's recognised date formats, which may or may not include seconds, military hours and so on. The system locale can be changed on reboot using the SystemProperties utility; the user local is easily switched from the Content Server "My Profile" page.

Apart from simple date/time comparisions, UCM can also do a great job at converting a given timestamp to the current timezone, adding daylight saving as required for us. You will need to tell it what timezone you are converting from by manually adding the timezone and then explaining the format of the timestamp. Use zz to indicate a timezone code. For example, let's convert the new year's countdown in New York to my local time (Sydney) and see when they'll join in on our party.

<$parseDateWithPattern("1/1/11 America/New_York",
"d/M/y zz")$>

Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be a built-in way of converting the local timestamp to a specified timezone. I get around this by calculating the difference between a date in local time and the same date specified as another timezone, then adding that difference to my local time. For example, when we're doing the new year's countdown in Australia, how far behind will the UK be?

<$newYearUK = parseDate("1/1/2011")
+ toInteger(parseDate("1/1/2011"))
- toInteger(parseDateWithPattern("1/1/2011 Europe/London",
"d/M/yy zz"))$>

One of the quirks I've observed with handling date objects is that errors are not reported in the server output log. Your code simply keeps going like nothing happened! This makes problems difficult to trace and you'll get unexpected results. It's a good idea to print out your timestamps as you manipulate them so you can see where any problems are.

**** UPDATE ****
Alec Kloss sent me an email with the following tip:
"...you should be able to go to any Content Server generated page and append

&UserTimeZone=America/Chicago

to the end of the URL and... that will change the timezone of all displayed times accordingly."
Nice one!

Copy a SiteStudio site? Even easier!

SiteStudio 10gR4 (546) is chock full of awesome new features, one of which is a new way to replicate your site. Yes, the previous article I just wrote about replication is already obsolete. Ha!

The new feature is section level replication and it's pretty nifty. It is enabled via the Designer application and it adds a new section property, called "Ready to replicate." If you switch region content anywhere on a webpage, the property automatically changes to false. You can see this on your webpage in the contribution mode banner as a "replicate" or "don't replicate" button. Now I have to confess... I haven't got a system set up to test this new replication functionality but I assume it is all part of the Manage Site Replication page*. Archiver should rebuild the project file on import and ignore the sections where "Ready to replicate" is false. Why did I say Archiver "should" rebuild? I haven't found a shred of documentation to explain any of this stuff, I'm just guessing (it only got a mention in the release notes textfile.)

Some other awesome features in recent SiteStudio releases include:

• Compare renditions - any renditions, not just the latest! On the Content Information page, in the revision history table, a new column is appended that allows you to compare the current revision to any other revision, future or past.
• Setting a default page name (instead of manually changing index.htm)
  SSDefaultUrlPageName=default.html
  
• Downloading images and documents from a friendly URL (the current directory) not the WebLocation (buried in the /groups/public/documents directories.)
  SSEnableDirectDelivery=true
  
• Oh and those stubbornly clinging to the Ephox editor, don't forget the "ondemand" editors option that was included a few releases prior. It lets you say how many elements get loaded automatically and how many must be clicked on to load. If your page has more than three or four elements then Ephox (Java) is likely to hang your machine, so this setting is a godsend.
  SSUseOnDemandEditors=true
  

There's more great features too, so do yourself a favour and upgrade.

* UPDATE
Section Level Replication works great! I was right, it works via the "Manage Site Replication" page with Archiver. Note that the project file's native file is modified to exclude sections but not the weblayout file. Strange but true.

How to copy a SiteStudio site

A question that pops up quite often how to copy a SiteStudio website, or maybe just a part of it. UCM is a content management system so by definition it tries to reuse content and prevent duplication! But there are situations where it is desirable to duplicate or replicate your site, like for a training demo or for backup purposes. There are a number of techniques to do this but surprisingly few people know how, or how do it really easily.

The best method for replicating site sections to another UCM instance is to use the SiteStudio Replicator application. This application can select individual website sections to replicate (or the whole lot.) It can also overwrite or retain the region content assignments on the target server, along with other section properties including custom section properties. A few simple clicks and the site structure is replicated. You don't need any firewall exceptions or UCM providers to connect the servers, you don't need to check in any content. Easy! It is already installed on your local machine alongside the SiteStudio Designer application, look for it in your Windows Start menu.

But we're still stuck on website duplication. There is an inherent problem here - website sections rely on unique section IDs - you can't simply duplicate a website, because you'll get duplicate website sections! If you really really need to duplicate a site or some site sections, download the project file xml and manually copy + change ALL the section IDs (append a letter to them all.) This is fraught with danger; the simplest mistake will cripple the entire website.

Other site replication methods include:

The Backup and Restore page basically downloads an entire site and all its config and bits and pieces and wraps it all up in a zip file. I suppose this is the cleanest way to backup a site but it doesn't duplicate a site. It has to be run manually and it creates a nasty big zip file. Not really useful unless you're doing a training demo and want to obliterate any changes when you import. It's in Content Server under the menu Administration > Site Studio Administration > Backup and restore.

The Manage Site Replication page uses the power of Archiver to replicate a site to another UCM instance with the benefit of running automatically as content changes. It can be configured to include the website content and/or the website structure (the project file which describes all the site sections.) The problem here is that it will replicate the entire site structure, which is typically not ideal. Most websites are constantly under development and require a planned launch, not an automatic deployment! It's best for synchronising content only, keep the project file out of it. It's in Content Server under the menu Administration > Site Studio Administration > Manage Site Replication.

Custom UCM pages - without components!

Check out this fabulous tip on Kyle's blog - provided by my old Stellent mentor and all-round nice guy Ed Bryant.

• Using Rules & Profiles To Drive Custom Pages

I'm gonna go replace my UCM search pages right now...

Contribution Folders: Same Same But Different

There seems to be a lot of people who misunderstand the Contribution Folders feature of UCM. Crikey, half the features seem to be misunderstood. Things like UCM security Accounts being mistaken for Microsoft Active Directory accounts, or SiteStudio website Sections being confused with directories in a website. Like a popular t-shirt in Cambodia says, they are "Same Same But Different."

Contribution Folders may look like regular directories or folders on your desktop but they are definitely not the same thing and definitely should not be used the same way. So what is a Contribution Folder anyway? Glad you asked.

A Contribution Folder is a fancy name for a webDAV access point. It allows you to drag-n-drop files from your machine right into the Content Server. How cool is that? However, the Content Server is not a filesystem like your computer, it's a content management system organised by metadata. The Contribution Folders are just virtual folders - they don't physically exist; there are no corresponding directories in the filesystem. A Contribution Folder is just a metadata value attached to a content item.

Think of them more like the "labels" feature in Gmail. A bunch of emails with the same label can all be displayed together or modified together, regardless of where they are located in your mailbox. Contribution Folders work in a similar way. There is a slight difference though; you can't have more than one folder assigned to an item. This makes folders unsuitable for organising your content, so only use folders for the easy drag-n-drop experience.

Now here's the tricky part. Content management requires all content to have metadata assigned. So it's easy to drag-n-drop your files into the system, but what metadata will it get? What security group is applied? This is where the Contribution Folder takes over. The folder itself can be preset with metadata that gets automatically applied to all files dragged inside it. So if you drop 15 images into the folder, all 15 get the same security group applied. Pretty neat, eh? No more pesky checkin forms. But what happens when you need to apply a different security group? Well, just create a different folder and drag into it. But now things start to get tricky. Which folder do you drag into? What happens if you use the wrong one? How deep do your folders go? Who is assigning the correct metadata to the folders? How much does a Cambodian t-shirt cost anyway? Folder management is tricky for the sysadmin and easily abused by contributors, so keep their use to a minimum.

Here's a few pointers about using folders:

• Items inside a folder must have unique file names. If you try to drag into a folder a new file with the same filename as an existing item in that folder, it will become a new revision of the existing item.
• Items can be "deleted" from folders. This means they get moved to the "trash" folder. However those items still turn up in search results and appear in websites! You'll need to delete from the trash folder to destroy the item.
  
• Contribution Folders should only be present on your contribution instance. They should definitely not be used in consumption and there's little to no reason for using them on dev or testing environments.
• Should you require folders installed on two or more connected environments, keeping them in sync is problematic. There is no way to control the creation of folder IDs (it is sequential only) so you must use the replication procedure, which is a tricky thing to set up. Never create folders on the other environments or you'll break your replication.
• Each folder slows down your system. There is a default limit of 1000 folders. If you reach that limit... well, you're not using them properly. Read this post again!