Grouper Users - Open Discussion List

["GW Brown, Information Systems and Computing" <>]

Hi Dominique,

Responses below.

Gary

--On 16 February 2010 16:30 +0100 Dominique Petitpierre 
<> wrote:

> Hello,
>
> On the Grouper Wiki I noticed that some sites display a composite
> value for each person subject members of a group, e.g.
>
> Michael Christopher Hyzer (chyzer, 12345678) Pennpay, Staff
>
> This is very informative and helps group managers to avoid confusion
> between homonyms.
>
> It is possible to construct a "description" attribute from many source
> fields with a SQL query when the JDBC source adapter is used, but I
> did not find a simple way to configure Grouper to do this when using
> the JNDI source adapter, and adding a new attribute on the LDAP side
> is not a practical option.
>
> This was discussed on grouper-users some time ago in the following
> thread (item 3.):
>   https://mail.internet2.edu/wws/arc/grouper-users/2008-07/msg00032.html
>
> Chris Hyzer < 
> >
>  mentionned
> (cf.
> https://mail.internet2.edu/wws/arc/grouper-users/2008-07/msg00035.html):
>
> | Or we could make a change request to allow multiple fields in this
> | config or the media.properties one...
>
> and "GW Brown, Information Systems and Computing" <
> >
> added
> (cf
> https://mail.internet2.edu/wws/arc/grouper-users/2008-07/msg00039.html):
>
> | Rather than add UI configuration through media.properties, having
> | 'virtual attributes' in the Subject API may be preferable so that
> | any Subject API client can use the same mechanism to combine
> | attributes.
>
> It would be a useful feature for sites that use the JNDI source
> adapter for the Subject API.
>
> - Has this been done? I.e. is there a way to specify a composite value
>   for the description attribute when using the JNDI source adapter?
No I don't think this has been done, and it would be useful.
> Not finding a way to configure it I followed the advice to modify the
> JSP code for the Admin UI (and the java code for the new Lite UI), to
> display the "name" and "subjectId" Grouper attributes in addition to
> the "description" attribute:
>
> diff grouper-ui-1.5.1/webapp/WEB-INF/jsp/subjectView.jsp{.01,}
> 12c12
> <     /></c:if><c:if test="${empty inLink}"><span class="<c:out
> value="${viewObject.subjectType}"/>Subject"></c:if><c:out
> value="${viewObject[mediaMap[attrKey]]}" /><c:if test="${empty
> inLink}"></span></c:if>
> ---
> >     /></c:if><c:if test="${empty inLink}"><span class="<c:out
> >     value="${viewObject.subjectType}"/>Subject"></c:if><c:if
> >     test="${viewObject.subjectType=='person'}"><c:out
> >     value="${viewObject['description']} (${viewObject['name']},
> >     ${viewObject['subjectId']})" /></c:if><c:if
> >     test="${viewObject.subjectType!='person'}"><c:out
> >     value="${viewObject[mediaMap[attrKey]]}" /></c:if><c:if
> >     test="${empty inLink}"></span></c:if>
>
> This displays the person subjects in the Admin UI as
>   description (name, subjectId)
> e.g.
>   Michael Christopher Hyzer (chyzer, 12345678)
>
> diff
> grouper-ui-1.5.1/java/src/edu/internet2/middleware/grouper/ui/util/Groupe
> rUiUtils.java{.01,} 1006c1006,1011
> <     label = subject.getDescription();
> ---
> >     if ("person".equals(subject.getType().getName())) {
> >       label = subject.getDescription() + " (" + subject.getName() + ")";
> >     } else {
> >       label = subject.getDescription();
> >     }
>
> and this displays the person subjects in the Lite UI as
>   description (name)
> e.g.
>   Michael Christopher Hyzer (chyzer)
>
> - Is this workaround reasonable? (i.e. will it work in all cases and
>   not break anything)?
The Admin UI was designed so that different templates could be used in 
different contexts - so I consider it valid to adapt templates in the way 
described on the Wiki. Once you do start to use different templates then it 
may be necessary to make changes in more than one place, though is often 
possible to construct new templates by including existing templates.

I don't consider changing Java to be that reasonable - unless it has been 
designed to use interfaces / subclasses to override some features.

We haven't looked at more closely integrating some of the templates for the 
Admin and Lite UIs, but the use of virtual attributes is likely to be an 
easier solution
> - Should "webapp/WEB-INF/jsp/subjectSearchResultView.jsp" also be
>   modified? (It does not seem to be used anywhere.)
It is used when displaying 'Search' results - if you look in the source 
you'll see:
<!--       view=subjectSearchResult
   object type=I2miSubject
      from key=subject.view.subjectSearchResult
   dynamicTile=/WEB-INF/jsp/subjectSearchResultView.jsp
-->    <!--start:/WEB-INF/jsp/subjectSearchResultView.jsp-->



> Currently this workaround is limited to use only the three Grouper
> attributes defined in the subject API source.xml configuration file
> (SubjectID_AttributeType, Name_AttributeType,
> Description_AttributeType).
>
> - Is there a way to use the other attributes declared in source.xml
>   (e.g <attribute>employeeType</attribute>) in this JSP or java code?
You should be able to use getAttribute methods on subject objects - though 
bear in mind that these are allowed to be multi-valued
> In any case, modifying source code instead of configuring in
> properties or xml files might not be very stable across releases and I
> hope that the feature discussed above will be available!
Hopefully we can discuss this on the next conference call.
> Best regards,
> Dominique
> --
> Mr Dominique Petitpierre,  Dominique.Petitpierre(at)unige.ch
> Division Informatique, University of Geneva, Switzerland



----------------------
GW Brown, Information Systems and Computing