6. Modifications to Actions Applications Administrative Interface

6.1 Remote Node Administration

Access

The table of remote nodes, nodes , must be maintained manually by the Action Applications super administrator. If a user is super admin, a new option "Remote Nodes" should appear on the top navigation bar. Selecting this link opens the new admin/nodes.php3 node administration page.

nodes.php3

admin/nodes.php3 is a typical Action Application admin page. It displays a list box containing all known remote nodes from the table nodes .

Items from this list can be selected. A hit on a button "Edit" displays the details concerning the node selected. These details are:

• The node name as shown in the public interface. This is also the inter node login user name. Field: nodes.name
• Server URL. Field: nodes.server_url
• Password for data exchange. This password is valid in both directions, that is, it is used for incoming and for outgoing feeds. Field: nodes.password

A button "Submit" commits changes made into the nodes table. A "Add" button clears all fields and prepares a setting for the next "Submit" to add a record. A "Delete" button can be used to delete an entry.

6.2 Slice admin / import and export settings

Access

Settings to export or import a slice's items to or from a remote slice or user are made on a new page which can be accessed using a new item on the left navigation bar in slice administration. The existing "Import & Export" item is renamed to "Inner Node Feeding". Just below this, two new items, "Inter Node Export" and "Inter Node Import" are added. Selecting these links lead to new admin pages, se_inter_import.php3 and se_inter_export.php3.

se_inter_export.php3 / Inter node export settings

se_inter_export.php3 is a typical Action Applications admin page, too.

For external, inter node exports, the page contains:

• a list box displaying each existing external export by remote node and remote user name
• a "Delete" and a "Edit" button which, when selected, delete or edit a selected item from the list box
• an "Add" button to clear the input controls and to make the next selection of the "Submit" button create a new record
• two controls to actually edit an item: A list box with node names where one of them can be selected and a input box for the remote user name. The remote user name input box may be left blank to grant access to all users at a node. A hint to carefully spell the user name may be appropriate.
• A "Submit" button to sumbit changes.

The actions performed in this section manipulate records in the ef_permissions table.

se_inter_import.php3 / Inter node import settings

se_inter_import.php3 is a typical Action Applications admin page as well. It allows to manipulate the inter node feed import settings.

The page contains controls to manipulate the external_feeds table. It contains:

• A list box with all current remote imports the slice receives. Items in the (possible one line height) list box can be selected.
• A "Delete" button to delete the selected item.
• A label "New - Select node: " besides a combo box (one line height list box) listing all remote nodes from table nodes together with a "Create New Feed From Node" button.

The idea behind this is that there are no attributes of a incoming remote feed that can be edited, so an edit button is not necessary; and that the creation of a new feed requires two steps. Selecting the "Create New Feed From Node" button requires that the user has selected a remote node before. After hitting this button, the program does some (background) action:

• Start to display the answer page and print a fancy and exciting and possibly even partly blinking "please wait, connecting remote node..." message without ending the page. Flush the output to the user's browser.
• Using the xml_fetch function, fetch a list of possible slices from the remote server. The url to connect to is taken from the nodes table, field server_url. The parameters are filled as follows:

  node_username

  constant string ORG_NAME

  password

  string from field nodes.password

  user

  login name of the logged in user

  slice_id

  empty string

  start_timestamp

  number 0

  categories

  empty string

• check the first character of the xml data. If it is not a '<' (less than) character, consider this xml data to be an error message from the server. Display an apology and the error message, possibly with a hint how to contact the node administration.
• try to parse the response using the apcrss_parse function. If the function result indicates an xml error, do the same error handling as in the previous paragraph.
• Check the result data for one or more occurances of slice information. If there is no slice information, the user may not have permission to import any data from that node. Tell her to contact the administrator of the remote slice and to make them enter her correct user name and to spell it right (which is the critical point of failure in this procedure).
• If there is slice information, show it in a list box for the user to select the correct slice. Possible actions at this point would be "Select" and "Cancel". "Cancel" brings you back to the plain existing imports list. "Select" adds the feed (next paragraph)
• "Select" generates an entry in the external_feeds table; obviously, the fields are filled with a new unique feed_id (feed_id), the local (slice_id) and remote (remote_slice_id) slice_id, the remote node name (node_name) and the user id of the logged in user as used in the xml_fetch request (user_id). The newest_item field is set to the current time.

  The categories of the slice selected are filled into the ef_categories table, where the fields are filled with the category name (category), the category id (category_id), the feed_id as used in the external_feeds table (feed_id). The field target_category_id is set to the default category of the local slice. As a result, all categories are used for the feed by default. approved is set to 0.

se_filters.php3 / Incoming feed filtering by categories

The existing file se_filters.php3 is used to filter inner node feeds by categories. It manipulates the table feeds to store the filters the administrator of the receiving slice has made.

This file is modified in such a way that it seamlessly allows to manipulate both external as well as internal feeds to be filtered by category. Internal feeds allow the user to specify source and destination categories. External feeds will differ because the categories which an incoming feed has may possibly not exist at the local node. This means that the option "same category" is not appropriate and must not be available. While the combo boxes on the left side of the table on that page would show possible source categories from the remote feed from table ef_categories , the right column shows all possible target categories of the receiving slice.

A category not selected will get an empty string in ef_categories.target_category_id which excludes this categories' items from the feed. The Approved checkbox manipulates the field ef_categories.approved.