Nodes basics

The nodes content management system for software development artifacts is based on a tree structure of elements called nodes, very similar to a file system.

Tree

The nodes are organized in a tree. There are no restrictions to the structure of the node tree, there is nothing like spaces or similar.

However, nodes in the tree may have influence on subordinate nodes. This is e.g. true for access control permissions and CSS stylesheets. This allows to have dedicated access permissions for dedicated branches of the tree and to display branches differently.

Nodes and node types

Each node has an associated node type. The node type specifies, which properties and child nodes the node may have.

A property is a basic attribute of the node. For instance, a node may have a creation property of type timestamp, that stores the creation time of the node. Other property types are strings, references, integers, booleans etc.

A child node is a node below the current node, which is the parent of that child node.

For most of the nodes in the repository there will be a specific view, e.g. the nodes:htmlDiv node type is the equivalent of a static HTML page.

The default view

Each node can be displayed in the default view using the default view icon . For node types, that have no specific view, and for which no template exists (see below), is is the only view possible:

The default view has

• A list of node properties. A node property is an attribute of the actual node. It consists of a name and a value.

• A list of child nodes. For each child node, the name of the node and its type will be displayed.

• A menu bar at the left side of the page, with the most frequently used actions for the node. In the default mode, the menu will become visible once you hover the icon. If you press the start icon, the menu will be expanded and become visible all the time. You can then shrink it again using the icon.
  • New. Create a new child node with the help of an assistant, for details have a look at the corresponding use case.
  • Move. Move the current node to some other location within the repository using a node selector dialog. If you select the same folder, but specify a different name, this will rename the node.
  • Copy. Copy the current node to some other location using a node selector dialog. If you select the same folder, but specify a different name, this will copy the current node into the current folder using the name name. Else this will copy the node below the selected node using the current name.
  • Order. The child nodes of a node have a defajult order, this is usually the order of their creation. You see this order in the child node list of the default view. You can change the order in the order dialog using drag & drop.
  • Remove. This will remove the node and all its child nodes. Note, that that you cannot remove a node as long as there are references to the node. You can use the reference action (see below) to list the nodes referencing the current node.
  • Export file. This will only available for nodes of node type nodes:file. A file selector dialog will let you specify a local folder where the node will be stored as a file.
  • Export. Exports the node into an XML format to a local file selected by a file selector dialog.
  • Import. Imports a node from the XML format into the repository as a child node of the current node.

• A toolbar with less frequent actions
  • Full text search
  • Structured text search for property values
  • Version history. A list of versions of the node, provided the node type has been specified as nodes:versionable.
  • References to the current node
  • Logoff
  • Navigation to previous sibling node
  • Navigation to next sibling node
• A navigation bar
  • An icon for the navigation dialog. This will popup and let you select any node of the repository visible to you.
  • The path of the current node. The path components are hyperlinks, that let you select the particular component.