{"id":8124,"date":"2013-07-23T09:42:02","date_gmt":"2013-07-23T07:42:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.trifork.com\/?p=8124"},"modified":"2013-07-23T09:42:02","modified_gmt":"2013-07-23T07:42:02","slug":"persist-beans-to-the-magnolia-repository-with-the-om-module","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/trifork.nl\/blog\/persist-beans-to-the-magnolia-repository-with-the-om-module\/","title":{"rendered":"Persist beans to the Magnolia repository with the OM module"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Magnolia\"<\/p>\n

Every once in a while when developing some integration with Magnolia CMS, you might want to save the contents of a bean to a Magnolia node.\u00a0The other way around, from content node to a bean, has never been an issue due to the Content2Bean<\/a>\u00a0utilities that Magnolia provides. You might have already stumbled upon the\u00a0Bean2ContentProcessor<\/a>\u00a0and the\u00a0Bean2ContentTransformer<\/a>\u00a0interfaces in the Magnolia API, or have been looking for Bean2Content or Bean2Node, but an implementation has yet to be seen.\u00a0So when we want to save object classes to the repository, we are usually stuck creating content nodes, and adding the node data manually. Over and over again.<\/p>\n

While working on a new Magnolia tool, the need to persist object structures to the repository arose once again.\u00a0This time ’round I finally decided that it was time for a simple, yet effective, Magnolia Object Mapping module. Interested??<\/p>\n

Download OM Module<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n


\n<\/a><\/p>\n

The Magnolia Object Mapping module (magnolia-om)<\/h2>\n

The Magnolia Object Mapping module contains a service that uses reflection to access the accessible fields in an object class by their getter-methods. By default the contents of an object is persisted entirely to the Magnolia repository. Any field types that are compatible with Magnolia NodeData<\/a>, are saved as node data properties of the content node. Any other types and their fields are saved as sub-nodes.<\/p>\n

Getting started<\/h3>\n

Start by downloading and deploying the Magnolia-OM jar<\/a> in your local library. Add the following dependency to your project:<\/p>\n

\n<dependency>\n\t<groupId>nl.trifork.magnolia<\/groupId>\n\t<artifactId>magnolia-om<\/artifactId>\n\t<version>1.0.0<\/version>\n<\/dependency>\n<\/pre>\n
Example<\/h3>\n
Say we have these two very simple objects, An Author and his Books. The getters and setters are removed from the examples for clarity.<\/p>\n
\npublic class Author {\n\n\tprivate String name;\n\tprivate String email;\n\tprivate List<Book> books;\n\t...\n}\n\npublic class Book {\n\n\tprivate long id;\n\tprivate String title;\n\tprivate String isbn;\n\t...\n}\n<\/pre>\n
When saved manually the code will be quite verbose:<\/p>\n
\nSession session = MgnlContext.getJCRSession("config");\nNode node = session.getNode("\/parent\/path");\n\nNode authorNode = node.addNode(author.getName());\nauthorNode.setProperty("name", author.getName());\nauthorNode.setProperty("email", author.getEmail());\n\nfor (Book book : author.getBooks()){\n\tNode bookNode = authorNode.addNode(book.getTitle());\n\tbookNode.setProperty("id", book.getId());\n\tbookNode.setProperty("isbn", book.getIsbn());\n\tbookNode.setProperty("title", book.getTitle());\n}\n\nsession.save();\n<\/pre>\n
However, after creating some instances and saving this structure using the Magnolia OM service, your code will look like:<\/p>\n
\nmappingService.toNode("\/parent\/path", "config", myAuthorObject);\n<\/pre>\n
This will result in the following Magnolia node structure in the config<\/em> repository, under \/parent\/node<\/em>:
\n\"Magnolia<\/p>\n
Annotated beans<\/h3>\n
When you have full control over the contents of your objects, then this straight-forward approach might just be enough for you. However, if you want some more control over what properties are saved, the property names or their types and the Magnolia node types, we have introduced some annotations:<\/p>\n