Shape Framework

Version 12 December 2010 - by Paolo Lulli http://lulli.net/

Introduction

This is only a short introduction to the Shape Framework.

Shape Framework features:

• Service Oriented Architecture
• 3-Tier architecture
• MVC engine
• Flexible RBAC Authentication
• Portable Database Query Engine

Packages and Bundle(s)

You may need installing one of the following bundles:

• A complete remote SERVER solution [server_xmlrpc]
• A CLIENT for a local server [client_local]
• A RPC CLIENT for a remote server [client_xmlrpc]
• A full local install of both SERVER and CLIENT [full]

All these bundle result from some combination of the following packages:

• shape-client-local
• shape-client-rpc
• shape-server-backend
• shape-server-frontend
• shape-server-gateway
• shape-server-web

which provide the full set of features.

Role-Based (RBAC) Authentication

Install

Remote server

On the local machine

cd $APPLICATION_HOME/install

./install-remote.sh     

then, ssh on the remote machine you're going to install, and cd to the directory

cd $REMOTE_BACKEND_INSTALL_DIR/server/admin

launch the following script:

./init.sh

it initializes the database and the log directory.

Client

cd $APPLICATION_HOME/install

./install-local-client.sh 

Local Server

cd $APPLICATION_HOME/install

install-local-server.sh 

Programming Interface

Configuration Manager

All top-level configurations are available from the ConfManager class; it exposes the following methods:

//User Data Acquisition
public abstract function registerUser( $name, $surname, $nickname, $password, $openid );

//Account Management
public abstract function createAccount($userid, $group_name, $role_name);
public abstract function activateAccount($account_id);
public abstract function deactivateAccount($account_id);

//Roles Creation
public abstract function createRole($name, $description);
public abstract function deleteRole($roleName);

//Resources Installation
public abstract function installResource($resName);
public abstract function deleteResource($resName);
public abstract function addResourceToRole($resName, $roleName);
public abstract function removeResourceFromRole($resName, $roleName);

For example, to call the

registerUser(...)

method we can code the following:

require_once('../conf/backend.inc');
require_once(BACKEND_DIR.'/kernel'.'/ConfManager.class.inc');
$cm = new ConfManager;
$userid = $cm->registerUser( "name", "mysurname", "mynick", "mypassword", "myemail@email.com");

N.B.:

backend.inc

is the backend configuration file; above all, it sets the value for the

BACKEND_DIR

constant