Ever wanted to display records via a classification browser? The ADAM ClassificationTree control makes this easy for you. All you need is a... ClassificationTree control and a couple lines of code.

This example shows you how to accomplish this.

Example

Create a web page containing an AdamPageManager and a ClassificationTree. The AdamPageManager (required on all ADAM pages) manages all kinds of page events, such as gathering and showing messages when needed.
Obviously, we also need a ClassificationTree control on this page.

Today's web is all about AJAX. Google Mail, Facebook, Twitter, and just about everyone else uses it these days thanks to the helping hand of libraries such as Microsoft AJAX, jQuery and others. At the base of all of this technology is the XMLHttpRequest object that performs background requests to provide asynchronous updates. While being the cornerstone of today's web, it has also spawned interest from the wrong kind of developers, and security became a concern.

In the older days, this problem was 'fixed' by browsers in different ways. But more recently, a new standard was adopted by W3C (the folks that set the web standards) called Cross-Origin Resource Sharing". It has been introduced in Firefox 3.5 and Safari 4.

This is why you'll have a hard time calling web services from JavaScript in these browsers, unless the service specifically implements the access control features described in the standard. And since most services that our outside of your domain are also outside your control, you can't change them to include support for this new standard.

Remember part 1 of Søren Trudsø Mahon's article of DXP? Who's up for part two? Here goes:

In part 1 we saw how to use the API, in this post we’ll have a look at the implementation behind this.

The interface of the API

To do this, we've created a fluent API for searching ADAM objects: inspired by this series of blog posts:
http://www.lostechies.com/blogs/gabrielschenker/archive/2010/01/03/fluent-silverlight-fluent-api-and-inheritance.aspx
http://www.lostechies.com/blogs/gabrielschenker/archive/2010/01/03/fluent-silverlight-fluent-api-and-inheritance.aspx

This article is soooo cool, and it is so for several reasons.

First, I didn't write it. The idea, the development and writing the article are all done by Søren Trudsø Mahon from our ADAM partner DXP. Second, this isn't going to be a single blog post. This is only part one of three blog posts! This one gets you interested I'm sure, more details (and code!) will follow in the coming days. Stay tuned if you want to learn more about this! Third. It's one of those things that any self respecting developer will see and say "Cooool". But that's just my humble opinion.

Anyway. Enough said. Next is Søren speaking:

Introduction

As you might remember from one of our previous webcasts, we provide a set of pages that provide a number of useful administration and monitoring tools for Adam, such as clearing translation or watermark caches, enabling auto-translations or viewing statistics. This set of pages is handled by the Admin Handler.

What few of you will know is that this handler is also designed with the well known Adam Provider Model in mind. Therefore, you can plug-in your own handler in this page and add additional monitoring tools.

In this blog post, I'll create my own handler that checks the state of the different servers participating in my Adam server environment.

A recent support call that came in discussed a problem concerning downloading files from an ADAM system with the Internet Explorer family of browsers. The problem occured when downloading files with non-ASCII characters in the filename, using the following code:

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    AdamDownloader.DownloadFile(this, path, true);

On the client side, this results in the following dialog shown to the user:

This is a particular hard problem to solve, as there is no single solution that will work for all browsers. Let me explain...

Introduction

Since we have added a data source for ADAM in version 4.4, you got an easy way to consume ADAM objects in standard ASP.NET controls, like e.g. a System.Web.UI.WebControls.GridView.

Next to this, we have added at that time the FieldBinder mechanism to easily show the content of a Field when using the data sources framework.

But did you know that you have also an easy solution for showing images of a record? They are called image binders and out-of-the-box, we provide you six of them:

One of the new controls introduced in ASP.NET 3.5 is the ListView control. It gives you the same flexibility as the Repeater control, but with the features of the GridView and DetailsView, and then some! One of the niceties of this new control is that it uses the new DataPager control, and that it lets you place this anywhere on your page, not just inside your ListView.

This new DataPager gives you a lot more control over its looks than what was available before. This control leaves all the rendering of the output to one of the DataPagerField objects that you add to it, like so:

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<asp:DataPager runat="server" ID="pager" PageSize="10" >
  <Fields>
    <asp:NumericPagerField />
    <asp:NextPreviousPagerField />
    <asp:TemplatePagerField>
      <PagerTemplate></PagerTemplate>
    </asp:TemplatePagerField>
  </Fields>
</asp:DataPager>

ASP.NET 3.5 ships with three such pager fields: the NextPreviousPagerField, which displays buttons for the next or previous page, the NumericPagerField, which displays a series of buttons for pages, and last but not least the TemplatePagerField, which gives you fine control over the rendered output using a template. This, however, can lead to pretty complex markup in your ASPX page. You can, however, create your own custom DataPagerField, and it isn’t terribly difficult. In this article, I will explain you how.

A couple of our partners are using Adam to provide SaaS solutions to their customers and we try to keep that in the back of our mind whenever we’re designing a new module, studio or feature. A couple of examples:

Why are ADAM customers such as LEGO, Microsoft, Elopak and many more shifting their focus from cost control to proven ROI? ADAM Software has changed the perception on Digital Asset Management from a super file system into a business execution system.

At the 5th ADAM Kick Off conference, we present customer cases, product introductions and analyst's insights.

Take the opportunity, together with more than 120 professionals from leading organizations, to discuss what's happening in your world of DAM.