ESciDoc Admin
Overview[edit]
eSciDoc admin is a a solution for the management of master data in an installation of the eSciDoc core services. Currently it is implemented as TurboGears web application talking to the core services REST interfaces.
It implements (parts of) the use cases specified in
- PubMan_Func_Spec_Organizational_Unit_Management
- PubMan_Func_Spec_Collection_Administration
- PubMan_Func_Spec_User_Management
Repository URL: https://subversion1.escidoc.mpg.de/admin/
Installation/Deployment[edit]
Requirements[edit]
- Python (>= 2.4),
- TurboGears (>= 1.0.1) (see http://docs.turbogears.org/1.0/Install for details),
- SQLAlchemy (0.3.x) (install with easy_install),
- it may be necessary to upgrade to a newer version of pysqlite,
- httplib2
Download[edit]
You may download the application as egg appropriate for your architecture:
TODO
Or run eSciDoc admin from a repository checkout: run
svn co https://subversion1.escidoc.mpg.de/admin/trunk/escidocadmin
in a suitable directory.
Deployment[edit]
Configuration[edit]
You need to supply some basic configuration settings for the application by adding the following lines to the global section of the configuration file.
Configure the core services instance to which to talk
framework.host="host[:port]"
and a default user account to use
framework.user="username" framework.password="password"
When deploying the web application behind a proxy (e.g. apache), make sure to set
server.webpath="http://your.domain/escidoc/admin/path/"
Controlling the Application[edit]
You may use the start-escidocadmin.py script to start the application from the commandline.
Running eSciDoc admin behind Apache HTTPD[edit]
To run eSciDoc admin behind Apache HTTPD add the following to your apache configuration:
RewriteRule ^/escidoc/admin/path/(.*) http://127.0.0.1:8080/$1 [proxy,L] <Location /escidoc/admin/path> Order allow,deny Allow from all </Location>
Technical Documentation[edit]
Overview[edit]
eSciDoc admin manages resources of the following kinds:
- Organizational Units, abbreviated ou,
- Contexts, abbreviated ctx,
- User Accounts (and Grants), subsumed under aa (for authentication and authorization).
Architecture[edit]
eSciDoc admin - as a web interface to the resource handler services that support resource CRUD operations - has a very simple architecture:
- All communication with the core services resource handlers is implemented in a core services client library
- As a !TurboGears aplication, escidocadmin subscribes to the MVC pattern, or better the VC pattern, because the persistence layer is implemented by the framework.
- The management logic for each resource is implemented in one controller class.
- The views for each resource are implemented in one (or several) templates.
Core services Client Library[edit]
The core services client library provides a client class which mediates access to a core services installation much like a database connection mediates access to a database.
Since resources are transferred between core service resource handlers and clients as xml representations, the client library treats resources basically as (wrapped) xml dom objects (more precisely as etree.Element instances). A Resource instance is initialized with an appropriate Element of a parsed core service resource handler response, and can be serialized for passing it back to the core service resource handler.
User Management[edit]
eSciDoc admin uses eSciDoc user accounts to access the core services resource handlers. After successful authentication with the external identity provider the admin application receives a token which is subsequently used to authenticate requests to the core service resource handlers (see login_finish).