Additional properties using aspect

This is one basic question that every one asks especially if you worked on other commercial ECM platforms such as EMC's Documentum or IBM's FileNet.

In Alfresco, adding custom properties (meta-data) can be achieved in a couple of ways:

• Creating custom aspect
• Creating custom content type

Both has its own benefits, which one to choose depends on the business problem you are trying to solve. I will discuss this later in other post.
For now, below are the detailed steps for creating a custom aspect and then creating a business rule to capture the data for the properties defined in the custom aspect.

Steps for version 3.2 Community 

• Go to the extensions folder (/tomcat/shared/classes/alfresco/extensions) and rename the custom-model-context.xml.sample to custom-model-context.xml if you haven't extended the model yet.
• Open customModel.xml file and add your custom aspect at the end of the file, right above "</model>". For e.g. you can add the following, this will add a custom aspect called ProductDetails

<aspects>
<aspect name="custom:ProductDetails">
<title>Product Details</title>
<properties>
<property name="custom:ProductName">
<title>Product Name</title>
<type>d:text</type>
<protected>false</protected>
<mandatory>true</mandatory>
<multiple>false</multiple>
</property>
<property name="custom:ProductDescription">
<title>Product Description</title>
<type>d:text</type>
</property>
<property name="custom:ProductID">
<title>Product ID</title>
<type>d:int</type>
</property>
</properties>
</aspect>
</aspects>

• Now modify web-client-config-custom.xml file in the extension folder. This will enable the web client application to recognize the new custom aspect and display it in the web interface.
• Add the following XML code at the end of the file, right above </alfresco-config>. This will list our custom aspect in the business rules "Set action values" page.

<config evaluator="string-compare" condition="Action Wizards">
<aspects>
<aspect name="custom:ProductDetails"/>
</aspects>
</config>

• Still in web-client-config-custom.xml file. Add the following right after the above code block. The code below will ensure that the custom properties will be displayed in the content's view details page.

<config evaluator="aspect-name" condition="custom:ProductDetails">
<property-sheet>
<separator name="sepProduct1" display-label="Product Details" component-generator="HeaderSeparatorGenerator" />
<show-property name="custom:ProductName"/>
<show-property name="custom:ProductDescription"/>
<show-property name="custom:ProductID"/>
</property-sheet>
</config>

• Now we have our custom aspect defined with our additional properties that we want to capture based on our business rules. Lets restart alfresco now for the bootstrap to load this information.
• Use custom aspect as a business rule.
• Log in to alfresco as an admin and navigate to the space where you want to capture additional properties.
• While in the space for e.g. Company Home > Products, click "More Actions" and then "Manage Content Rules"
• Click "Create Rule", this is a 4 step process

  Step1: Select Condition: All Items

  Step2: Select Action: Add aspect to item; Set Values: Product Details

  Step3: Type: Inbound; Title: <some title>; Description: <some description>; Check apply rule to sub spaces;

  Step4: Review and click Finish

Thats it you are done! try adding documents to the "Product" space, you will see your custom properties.