e-office Domino blog

Quick XPages tip: Sample xsp.properties file

Frank van der Linden 30 January 2012 13:43:03

As I was tackleing the problem of the dijit.Dialog and Domino 8.5.2 last weekend. I found in the data\properties directory of my Domino server a sample file of the xsp.properties.
With the xsp.properties file you can enhance or modify some behavior of the XPages application.
This sample file give you an inside of (all) most properties, who can be used in a xsp.properties file.
The best part of this sample file is the sort of documentation of each property.

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Bug in Domino Pickers in Internet Explorer 9

Frank van der Linden 28 January 2012 21:10:07

In an application I have build for a customer, we encountered a strange problem when loaded in a true IE9 browser.

So I created a defect at the Extension Library project at OpenNTF, see here.

As Philip Riand mentioned in a response, it is probably in the core Dojo library.

So tonight I did some debugging and testing.
And indeed it is in the core of the 1.4.3 dojo library.

So I created a reponse to the response of Philip Riand, see here.

Next I get in touch with my customer about the best way to get these problem fixed, by replacing the mentioned files.

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Installing 8.5.3 Upgrade Pack 1 and keep the SBT and JDBC extensions (Part 2)

Frank van der Linden 16 December 2011 06:51:08

When I wrote my blog yesterday of my succesfull attemp to install the 8.5.3 Upgrade Pack 1 and keep the SBT and JDBC controls/extensions.

This morning I was experience problems on my Domino server, when I was connecting to the Activity Stream on Greenhouse.
The Error indicates that there was no package like 'com.ibm.xsp.extlibx.sbt' was available.

So there was something missing on the server.

I went to my update site on my Domino server and disabled all the features except one, 'Extended Components Library for XPages Extension Feature'


I shutdown my Domino server and put back the line in the notes.ini 'OSGI_HTTP_DYNAMIC_BUNDLES=updateSite1.nsf'
Start my server, reload the page and voila, the Activity Stream was back


Lessons learned

After all the deployment of the Domino Upgrade Pack 1 was very simple and easy. To keep the SBT and JDBC extensions/controls there was no need to go to the filesystem.
Just disable the right features and restart the http task.

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Installing 8.5.3 Upgrade Pack 1 and keep the SBT and JDBC extensions

Frank van der Linden 15 December 2011 21:14:03

Yesterday finally the 8.5.3 Upgrade Pack 1 was released by IBM. It was a big step forwards for the way IBM can deploy updates in the future.
So I downloaded and unzipped it on my local HDD.

And followed the instructions from the wiki, for Domino here and Lotus Notes here. Everything went fine.

After I fired up my Domino server and Domino Designer I noticed that there were extensions missing. There was no JDBC controls anymore. And the list of available Datasources were reduced to 3.
In the problem pane there were also a lot of errors, stating that in the faces.config file of the Social Enabler there was no reference found to some sbt packages.

That was not what I was expecting, because for an internal project I used the ActivityStream Datasource etc.
So I shutdown the DDE and the Domino server.
For the Domino server put back the line 'OSGI_HTTP_DYNAMIC_BUNDLES=updateSite1.nsf' back in the notes.ini.

After starting the Domino server the packages were installed again.

In the DDE I ran File -> Application -> Application Management.  and checked my UpdateSite reference. After restart of the DDE everything was fine again. No errors anymore.

But I kept on thinking there should be away to get the best of both worlds.

This morning I realized, when I was looking at the 'Data\workspace\applications\eclipse\features' directory that there were *.extlib.* files and *.extlibx.* files.
And when I looked closer at the documentation in the wiki there was it stated, remove extlib files, so not the extlibx files.


During the day there was no time for perform a second attemp.

But tonight I did a second attemp, And this time I was succesfull to install the 8.5.3 Domino Upgrade 1 and keep the SBT and JDBC extensions/controls.

Lessons learned
In the DDE, when you uninstall the features via File -> Application -> Application Management., you must be keep this entry



Then follow the install instructions stated above mentioned wiki files.

When opening the DDE, no errors and still all the DataSources


And also my SBT and JDBC Controls


I am happy again and fully supported by IBM with this Upgrade Pack.

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Quick XPages Tip: Use view as variable with caution

Frank van der Linden 8 December 2011 17:38:42

Yesterday I was doing some enhancements for the OpenNTF XSnippets project
I encounterd a small problem, who I want to share here.

In the XPages world there are some object always available such as context, database and view.
For my code enhancement I was in need to get the page title.

That should not be a problem, just do: view.getPageTitle()

When I reload the XPage I got an error:


So I returned to my XPage in the Domino designer and searched for 'view' and I found the cause.
At the top of the Xpage there was some SSJS code to get the UniversalID of the Snippet document.


After I renamed the view variable to view1 and reload the Xpage it works again.

So use the variable view with caution

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JSFUtil java class and some new functions

Frank van der Linden 3 December 2011 13:53:05

In the XPages Help application from Paul Withers on OpenNTF I found 2 very usefull java classes.
The first one is the OpenLogItem Class, who use the OpenLog database also from OpenNTF.

The second, and I think the most usefull, is the JSFUtil class.

It contains very handy methods to get in Java grip on some XPages features, such as the scope variables (sessionScope, applicationScope etc), get the currentUser or current Database.
I use it in almost every Xpage project, when Java is involved.

And the last weeks I add some methods by myself, I needed in some Java code.

The first method is getBean(String beanName)
This method is very usefull to get access of particular managed bean


The second is getSubmittedValue(String componentId)
to use this snippet, you need both methods, but from your Java code call the method getSubmittedValue as parameter the id of the Component. It returns an Object who should be cast to the right class.


I submitted both methods at the XSnippets project of OpenNTF

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Bugfix release (2.1) of XPages RSS Control on OpenNTF

Frank van der Linden 2 December 2011 14:55:16

Yesterday I have a report of a bug in the Geodata custom control and the mobile interface was not scalable.

Bugfixes:

- some FeedEntry class methods returned errors, so I modified the java code a little bit to avoid errors.

- mobile interface was not scalable. I changed the layout, to make it scalable.

The mobile interface is still very simple, more as an example then a full feature.


The new release is on OpenNTF and can be downloaded here.

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New Release of the XPages RSS Control on OpenNTF

Frank van der Linden 30 November 2011 10:33:41

Today I have uploaded a new release of the XPages RSS feed Control to OpenNTF.

What's new:

• All the feed entries will be a own FeedEntries object. It's more common use in Java. Performance will be beter. And you will have more control of the data to display.
• GeoRSS plugin added, so if the feed contains any Geo data it can be used for example in a Google Maps setting.
• Optimized the use of the MediaRSS plugin. Now you have access to all the MediaContent tags if provided in the RSS feed.
• Basic Mobile interface who uses the new Mobile Controls of the Extension Library.

I have made some sreenshots of the example feeds provided in the database, they can be found here.

And it will also particpate in the second OpenNTF Dev Contest

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Lotus Quickr as a team collaboration environment integrated in your Company spread procedures by using XPages

Frank van der Linden 18 November 2011 15:03:26

Within the IBM tooling there are several products managing files e.g. IBM Connections and Lotus Quickr. There is a confusion about those products. A frequently heard story is you have to choose one or the other. On the contrary both products have their own way of collaborate. IBM Connections is more focussing on people and their interests, ad-hoc and  by adding content colleagues will find you on your expertise. Lotus Quickr is a more managed system where you collaborate in a team (and even external people) and not explicitly  the whole company. Within Lotus Quickr you can facilitate to manage you project by adding files, agenda's, a forum etc.

In most cases a Quickr place is used as a stand-alone environment. For example: why should you not incorporate company data into Lotus Quickr in order to have all information for managing a project put together. With Lotus Quickr 8.5.1. you have the support of widgets for extending your Quickr places. Incorporating company data can be done in several ways. For example you can easily add you own iframe widget and display a xpage with relevant data. You have to implement two things:
- iframe widget page on the Quickr environment
- xpage presenting relevant data

As Quickr is a flexible environment for storing several types of data in a structure you define by your own, you can set up e.g. a Quickr Project template with a startpage which provides information how to use the place. Then you can add menu items for displaying relevant data for the project just by adding pages based on the iframe widget. Below an example xpage application embedded in Quickr.

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Is it a bug: xsp.resources.aggregate = true and Firefox

Frank van der Linden 10 November 2011 16:56:24

I am developing a webbased client for an internal project.
It is based on Lotus Notes 8.5.3 and build, of course, with XPages.

One of the nicest features of 8.5.3 is the aggregation of the Javascript and Css resources.

So for this project I checked this feature, to decrease page loading.

I use for this project to Javascript files, loaction.js and ybs.js

When I look at the source code of the page in the browser it looks a little bit weird, but in Chrome it works.


When I previewed the page in Firefox 7.x I get an error when I execute some Javascript function.
So I open up Firebug and noticed that none of the above files were loaded.

After I deselect the aggregation of the Javascript and Css resource in the application properties and reload the webpage in Firefox, in the source it looks 'normal' again.

And  I am able to execute some Javascript function.

Is this a bug in Firefox or is there something wrong with aggregation of javascript files??

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