Leveraging Webservices for Administrative Tasks

Objective

demonstrate a set of tools developed

at Indiana University that takes

advantage of CS's webservices and

database interactions in order to help

WCMS admins deal with day-to-day

tasks

Cascade Server User Conference 16 September, 2014

Leveraging Webservices for Administrative Tasks

Erick Carballo, carballo@iu.edu

Josh Lamar, jolamar@iu.edu

Enterprise Webtech Services – UITS – Indiana University

Agenda

1. Background

2. Description / demo

3. Final considerations/Questions

I. WCMS @ IU: Background

CS @ IU

• June 2007: Product evaluation• June 2008: HH’s Cascade Server

chosen by IU and pilot project core team created

• August 2008: Vendor-supplied training• September 2008: Pilot phase• February 2009: Initial training offered

and production service became available

CS @ IU: A Few Approx. Numbers

• All Indiana University: 8 campuses (115,000 students)

• Active WCMS Users: 3,800• Groups: 3,200• Page assets in system: 879,000• Files in system: 432,000• Folders: 84,000• Active logged-in (approx.): 40-70• Logins in a day: 150 discrete users• Great majority of content: Global area

8

Enterprise Web Technical Services

• Consolidated Hosting

Environment

• GoIU (url shortening

service)

• Instructional servers

• “Personal" pages

• Podcasting

Team manages the central web servers and related services available to *all* departments on *all* IU campuses

• Search

• Siteshare

• Web Analytics (analog and

weblog)

• Web Content Management

System

• IU’s Central Web Server

II. Description / Demo

I N D I A N A U N I V E R S I T Y

Admin Tools: Utilities

1. (All-inclusive) Publisher

2. Publisher Stats

3. Page Load Stats

4. Monitor user/group access

5. User messages

6. Misc. utilities

1. All-Inclusive publisher

13

1. Queue with 25 jobs or more

2. Job publishing for more than 20 minutes

3. Job at 100% for more than 5 mins.

15

Publisher’s mechanics

• Page with javascript makes Ajax call every 3 seconds (recursion)

• Ajax calls to get current publish jobs directly from db (cxml_publishrequest)

• Session (PHP) keeps track of timing• when/if time exceeded:

• table cells change color • text messages are sent accordingly

2. Publisher Stats

17

Publisher Stats’ mechanics

• PHP script as cron job: • infinite loop • pauses for 3 seconds after each reiteration • Loop finishes every hour and cron starts it again (keep Apache

server happy)

• Script queries cxml_publishrequest and stores info in independent database.

• Recorded jobs are stored in session and compared in order to avoid duplication

• DB query: • if page/file asset: info sent to db• if folder/publish set:

• webservices get child assets • info sent to db

• Google API for charts and related info (ajax calls for additional info)

3. Page Load Stats

Page Load Stats Mechanics

• New functionality added to CS’s onload.js

• The added code “clicks” on Metrics tab to get page’s Rendering Time (via jQuery) and sends data to external database (via Ajax)

• N.B.: Code requires that user lets page render and load fully.

https://wcms.iu.edu/admin/pageLoadStats.php

4. Monitor user/group access

04/13/2023

23

Monitor user/group access mechanics

• Only folder assets (too big otherwise)

• Look at cxml_aclentry then get children for folders

• Show the results on a webpage

5. User Messages

The users script works exactly like the group access script, but first it just gets all the groups the user belongs to and then loops through each one.

6. Misc. Utils.

Misc. Utilities

• Disk usage• Change creation date• Webservices object view• Id-2-path• Transports info

28

Disk usage

III. Final considerations

Cascade Server’s balance

• internal power, flexibility, and granularity

• webservices and db access: “external” potential

• ideal for monitoring and administrative tasks

Erick Carballo: carballo@iu.edu

Josh Lamar: jolamar@iu.edu

wcms.iu.edu