Basic Assets and their Creation

Basic Assets

Xcelerate provides some built-in assets such as page, template, collection, etc. However, since content server has a rich and flexible type system, you can define your own assets.

The Basic Assets Model helps us in the creation of User Defined Assets. For this, we need to know about the ASSET DESCRIPTOR FILES (ADF). An ADF is nothing but an XML file ( A Descriptor File), which describes the asset type, its properties (otherwise known as attributes), their storage location, how to display them, data types of the properties, etc.

Defining a new Basic Asset with AssetMaker:

A very simple example of a Basic Asset descriptor looks like this:

<ASSET NAME="NewBasicAsset" DESCRIPTION="A New Basic Asset"  PROCESSOR="4.0"
       DEFDIR="C:\Fatwire\Shared\Storage\New">
  <PROPERTIES>
    <PROPERTY NAME="value" DESCRIPTION="Value">
        <STORAGE TYPE="VARCHAR" LENGTH="80"/>
        <INPUTFORM TYPE="TEXT" WIDTH="50" MAXLENGTH="80" REQUIRED="NO" DEFAULT="" MULTIPLE="NO"/>
    </PROPERTY>
  </PROPERTIES>
</ASSET>

Description of Fields:

The NAME field in ASSET tag specifies the name that will be stored in the database.
The DESCRIPTION field in ASSET tag specifies the description.
The DEFDIR field in ASSET tag specifies the location where the URL fields need to be stored.
The PROPERTIES tag specifies the group of properties that belong to this asset.
The PROPERTY tag specifies the name of the property and its description.
The STORAGE tag specifies the data type and length
The INPUTFORM tag specifies the width, length, type that should be displayed in the UI.
The SEARCH tag specifies the name, etc that should be displayed in search screen.

How AssetMaker Works:

Using AssetMaker to create a new basic asset type involves four general steps:

1. Code the asset descriptor file.
2. Upload the file.
3. Create the table.
4. Register the elements.

Creation of Assets with Asset Maker Utility:

1. Double click on the ASSET MAKER in the tree in the Advanced UI. Click on “ADD NEW ASSETMAKER ASSET TYPE”. Enter the name as entered in ADF file, and upload the file.
2. In the next screen, Click on “CREATE ASSET TABLE” and then on “REGISTER ASSET ELEMENTS”
3. Now, enable the newly created assets for the site. The newly created assets are ready to be used by the site.