There are pages of our guild site that are maintained offline. For example, our loot page, which is built offline using a homegrown tool for tracking raids, mobs, loots..

I would like to add a “publish“ feature to the tool, so that predefined reports could be sent to specific content areas of the site. I could probably hack it out using the current interface, but it would be tough. Ideally, a Web Service, or SOAP approach would be very convienent. But, a normal post with username, password, guildID, contentID and content to a special upload interface page would probably be quicker.

Thanks!

Aha! I figured it out.

If anyone else is trying this, I have two important notes: 2 logins/cookies, and __VIEWSTATE.

Now if only it will work once I clean up my code from all the testing, I will be a happy camper. Perhaps even a dangerous camper.

Web services are yummy.

IMO, the only real valid content for external upload would be free form content. Unless you plan on opening up the ability to store .csv files or something like that which could be used to generate local views on data.

And yes, I had to handle the cookie validation.. here's the general technique - visit the login page (admin login), and grab a session cookie, then grab the viewstate from the returned content. The other asp variables are not needed, since there are no com objects on the page (I think I send them anyway though). Then it posts the application encoded form data (username and password) back, and grabs any new cookies. Then, it loads up the content editor page (only to get the viewstate information again - it's a lot of overhead to download what you are going to overwrite, but it won't work without the viewstate). Then submit the new content with the viewstate to the proper URL with the proper contentInstance id.. The only way I know of to easily get the contentInstance ID is to go into the editor for the content in a real session then right click and read it from the end of the url.

But it works nicely. I just feel kind of bad for the extra overhead that it takes to get the state right.

Here are two examples of content that the program generates and automatically uploads (with a button press).

Raid loot - this comes from the database, the tool allows entering/editing loot received... This is something that is probably only important to us, because of the way we distribute loot.

Magelo Scraped Roster - this is generated from a few clicks - import latest eq roster, import any new magelo ID's from eqrankings, import magelo information from magelo (this takes a while since there is a delay between each scrape, so that it doesn't spike magelo), then another click to generate the report, and a final one to post it. This would work for anyone as is, but the tool isn't really ready for general consumption. Besides, I am seriously considering putting a jsp front end on it.

I know they are not real pretty. I am working on making the report editor more generic so that it can store a dynamic hierarchical report format in the database. Right now, they are hardcoded in. I have the objects to load/store and build reports from the dynamic reports, but nothing to actually edit the reports.

Plus, there is another cooler report coming along. Maybe two. I would like to be able to display EP/Time flag progress based on magelo profiles.

Another interesting note... the tool I am writing is in java, and the normal java.net. stuff doesn't work right for this, so I had to write my own background client for it.

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I like it.

Would it be good to add GuildID to the Publish method for extra verification? I was first thinking that a single person might admin multiple guilds, but it seems like a good idea even if not.

Off the top of my head, the java for this would be something like:

public class ContentData
{
    public int ContentInstanceID;
    public String Title;
    public ContentData(int ContentInstanceID, String Title)
    {
        this.contentInstanceID = ContentInstanceID;
        this.Title = title;
}

public class FreeForm extends ContentData
{
    public string Html;
    public FreeForm(int ContentInstanceID, String Title, String Html)
    {
        super(ContentInstanceID, Title);
        this.Html = Html;
    }
}

Then, to call something like:

String method = "Publish";
String endpoint = " http://www.guildportal.com/Services/Publisher.asmx";

Service  service = new Service();
Call  call = (Call) service.createCall();

call.setTargetEndpointAddress( new java.net.URL(endpoint) );
call.setOperationName(new QName("http://soapinterop.org/", method));

String ret = "Error";

String content = “Some HTML content“;

FreeForm freeForm = new FreeForm(123456, “Some Title“, content);

try
{
   ret = (String)call.invoke( new Object[] { “myname”, “mypass”,  freeForm } );
}
catch(Exception e)
{
     System.out.println("Publishing: Remote exception: "+e);
    throw e;
}

Yeah, the publish method does all the security checking automatically.  It'll take the content instance id, trace that back up to the page, and from the page, it gets the guild.  From there, since you're passing in your credentials, it checks the guild-to-user record for the access level to make sure you have the proper administrative rights.