We ran into some issues with mandatory attributes in Alfresco 3.1 while working on a project for a client. When designing the content model in Alfresco, you can set a property to be mandatory by using this tag <mandatory enforced=”true”>true</mandatory>. The enforced attribute means enforced by the repository, while the value between the tags merely means enforced by the web client. There is an inherent problem with setting enforced=”true”, which is that when creating new content in Alfresco, you do not get a chance to fill out any attributes except what you see there. This means that if you have a custom attribute that is set to mandatory and you go through the wizard, you will get an integrity error from the repository. What is happening is that Alfresco is attempting to create content, but since the mandatory attribute was never filled, there is a problem. The only real way to fix this is to customise the content create/import screens to contain those mandatory attributes. Of course, if we are willing to relax the requirements, there are a couple alternatives. One is to set a default value for the attribute, which may suffice for some cases. The other is to forgo enforcing in the repository and do it only in the web client. This will allow the content to be created, but properties cannot be updated unless all the mandatory attributes that show up in the edit details screen are filled. After creating content, there is an option to edit the properties right away. With repository enforcement, we would never reach this screen to fill out the mandatory attributes. The problem is that the user can still press cancel and be left with the document with unfilled properties, but at least there are no errors and any attempts to update the properties would at least require filling out the mandatory values. This is what we went with for that project.

There are a few more quirks that need to be sorted out. When dealing with mandatory single select drop-downs (from list constraints), one would notice that even a blank value is considered filled. Essentially what it implies is that if you are using a list constraint, mandatory loses its meaning. Looking at the code it seems that Alfresco assumes these drop-downs are always filled and so forgo any mandatory checks in the User Interface. In our case, the client wanted a blank entry selected by default so that users can consciously select from the list without having a default entry selected for them, which is a perfectly understandable requirement. The way we solved this problem is by overriding the default TextFieldGenerator so that it will add checks when a dropdown is rendered. We would just make it add the same checks it would have added if it were one of the other UI widgets, with small changes to account for it being a dropdown. To make the blank entry, just add an empty value at the top of your list constraint.

The code is provided below and hopefully should be self explanatory. Basically, we override the set up of mandatory validations and check if the component is a dropdown so that we can execute our code. Then we perform the same operations the grandfather class would do, and then add an event listener when the dropdown box is change. I hope that you’re able to find this short article useful in some way.

   <managed-bean>
      <description>
         Bean that generates a text field component
      </description>
      <managed-bean-name>TextFieldGenerator</managed-bean-name>
      <managed-bean-class>com.company.CustomTextFieldGenerator</managed-bean-class>
      <managed-bean-scope>request</managed-bean-scope>
   </managed-bean>
      

public class CustomTextFieldGenerator extends TextFieldGenerator {

	@SuppressWarnings("unchecked")
	protected void setupMandatoryValidation(FacesContext context,
			UIPropertySheet propertySheet, PropertySheetItem item,
			UIComponent component, boolean realTimeChecking,
			String idSuffix)
	{
		if (component instanceof UISelectOne) {
			/* What follows is taken from the grandfather class */
			List<String> params = new ArrayList<String>(3);

			// add the value parameter
			StringBuilder value = new StringBuilder("(tempElement = document.getElementById('");

			value.append(component.getClientId(context));
			if (idSuffix != null)
			{
				value.append(idSuffix);
			}

			value.append("'),");
			value.append("tempElement.options[tempElement.selectedIndex]");
			value.append(")");
			params.add(value.toString());

			// add the validation failed message to show (use the value of the
			// label component of the given item)
			String msg = Application.getMessage(context, "validation_mandatory");
			addStringConstraintParam(params,
					MessageFormat.format(msg, new Object[] {item.getResolvedDisplayLabel()}));

			// add the validation case to the property sheet
			propertySheet.addClientValidation(new ClientValidation("validateMandatory",
					params, true));

			if (!component.getAttributes().containsKey("onchange")) {
				component.getAttributes().put("onchange", "processButtonState();");
			} else {
			}
		} else {
			super.setupMandatoryValidation(context, propertySheet, item, component, realTimeChecking, idSuffix);
		}
	}
}