Question

Can anyone give me an example how to create new IBM Connections Activity using xPages Social Enabler? I cant find any usefull info in documentation so I have adapted an example from Niklas Heidloff on how to create a new bookmark in Connections. I have the following code for creating a new activity:

try { 
   var svc = new sbt.ConnectionsService("/activities/service/atom2/activities"); 

   var sb = new java.lang.StringBuilder(); 
   sb.append("<?xml version=\"1.0\" encoding=\"UTF-8\"?>"); 
   sb.append("<entry xmlns:snx=\"http://www.ibm.com/xmlns/prod/sn\" xmlns:opensearch=\"http://a9.com/-/spec/opensearch/1.1/\" xmlns:thr=\"http://purl.org/syndication/thread/1.0\" xmlns=\"http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom\">"); 
   sb.append("<title type=\"text\">"); 
   sb.append("test activity from xpages"); 
   sb.append("</title>"); 
   sb.append("<content type=\"html\">"); 
   sb.append("</content>"); 
   sb.append("</entry>");                 

   var msg = svc.post(null, sb.toString(), "xml"); 
} catch(e) { 
    print(e) 
} 

But code above do not create anything but raises error on Domino console. This is returned by svc.post() command:

[31726:00075-3041917840] 11/19/2012 01:03:59 PM  HTTP JVM: Client service request to: http://vhost1279.site1.compute.ihost.com:81/activities/service/atom2/activities did not return OK status. Status returned: 415, reason: Unsupported Media Type, expected:information, please consult error-l 

[31726:00075-3041917840] 11/19/2012 01:03:59 PM  HTTP JVM: g-0.xml located in /local/opt/ibm/lotus/notesdata/domino/workspace/logs 

[31726:00075-3041917840] 11/19/2012 01:03:59 PM  HTTP JVM: com.ibm.xsp.extlib.sbt.services.client.ClientServicesException: HTTP Status 415, Unsupported Media Type. HTTP error response code received in response to request to url: http://vhost1279.site1.comties/service/atom2/activities 

Can anyone give me a hint how to use it properly or point me to some usefull documentation?

Answer 1

SOLVED!!! I looked to source and problem was obvious. This is rather a bug or at least misconception but can be easily resolved . According the docs and my testing proves this Connections requires the following header in request: Content-Type = application/atom+xml …. but in source code of Social Enabler I found these two related methods:

protected void prepareRequest(HttpClient httpClient, HttpRequestBase httpRequestBase, Options options) throws ClientServicesException {
// TODO: add support for gzip content
//httpClient.addRequestHeader(“Accept-Encoding”, “gzip”);

        if(options.getHeaders()!=null) {
            addHeaders(httpClient, httpRequestBase, options);
        }
        if (options.content != null) {
            String contentType = null;
            HttpEntity entity = null;
            Object content = options.content;
            try {
                //If a subclass overrides com.ibm.xsp.extlib.services.client.Service.processRequestContent(HttpRequestBase, Object, Options)
                //the the subclass must set the content type of the request, and also set the request's entity!
                if(processRequestContent(httpClient, httpRequestBase, options)){
                    if (content instanceof IValue) {
                        JsonFactory jsFactory = new JsonJavaScriptFactory(DesignerRuntime.getJSContext());
                        entity = new StringEntity(JsonGenerator.toJson(jsFactory, content, true));
                        contentType = "application/json";
                    }
                    else if (content instanceof JsonObject) {
                        JsonFactory jsFactory = JsonJavaFactory.instanceEx;
                        entity = new StringEntity(JsonGenerator.toJson(jsFactory, content, true));
                        contentType = "application/json";
                    }
                    else if (content instanceof Node) {
                        entity = new StringEntity(DOMUtil.getXMLString((Node) content, true));
                        contentType = "application/xml";
                    }
                    else {
                        entity = new StringEntity(content.toString());
                        contentType = findRequestTextContentType(options);
                    }
                }
            } catch (Exception ex) {
                if(ex instanceof ClientServicesException) {
                    throw (ClientServicesException)ex;
                }
                throw new ClientServicesException(ex, "Error while parsing request content");
            }
            if (entity != null && (httpRequestBase instanceof HttpEntityEnclosingRequestBase)) {
                httpRequestBase.setHeader("Content-type", contentType);
                ((HttpEntityEnclosingRequestBase) httpRequestBase).setEntity(entity);
            }
        }
    }

protected String findRequestTextContentType(Options options) {
        return "text/plain";
    }

As you can see there is no such header (application/atom+xml) for any case. But if you provide XML content as string, the code uses the ‘findRequestTextContentType’ method to return a default content type, which is ‘text/plain’ that is not correct for our situation. It is hardcoded so there is no way how to setup the default encoding. But, at least, the ‘findRequestTextContentType’ is type protected so it can be overriden. So I have created my own ConnectionsService class that extends the former one and overrides the findRequestTextContentType method to return correct content type for my case. And this works fine and resolved the problem !!

import sbt.ConnectionsService;

public class ConnectionsServiceCustom extends ConnectionsService {

    public ConnectionsServiceTcl(String serviceUrl) {
        super(serviceUrl);
        // TODO Auto-generated constructor stub
    }

     @Override
     protected String findRequestTextContentType(Options options) {
            return "application/atom+xml";
        }

}