Developing ASPX Pages for FileNet Open Client

This section provides guidelines on developing ASPX pages for FileNet Open Client. An understanding of FileNet P8 Image Manager, ASP, and Visual Basic programming and a basic familiarity with the ASP.NET Framework are prerequisites for this topic. Experience with VB programming with the ASP.NET SDK and Visual Studio, while helpful, is not, however, an absolute requirement for this section.

Topics covered in this section include:

Programmer Overview

In the FileNet Open Client model, Web server-based ASPX pages are developed in order to enable user-designed applets to perform customized FileNet P8 Image Manager functions in a manner that is comparable to the functionality provided for FileNet P8 Image Manager ActiveX clients (for IDM Web Services 3.x). The ASPX pages host the applets so that they can be launched either from the Open Client web application or via email notification messages. The ASPX page acts as the Controller layer of the MVC model. The ASPX page provides both the View layer (incorporating the various User, Factory, and other Controls that provide the user interface) and the Model layer (the XML data provided by the Data Providers) components in the form of a .NET Web Form, which is generated by the .NET Web Form Designer and is supplied to the client browser in response to the browser's HTTP request.

For those new to development in the ASP.NET platform environment, the .NET Web Form consists of the ASPX page, which is an HTML/XML-based visual representation of the HTML page and a related source file, called the "code-behind file", that provides event handlers, initialization code, and other supporting code for the user interface in the ASPX file. The code-behind file provides an associated equivalent class written in a .NET compliant language, such as VB.NET (Visual Basic using the .NET SDK), JavaScript, C#, C++, Managed C++, etc. (FileNet P8 Image Manager Open Client has standardized on VB.NET). The ASPX code-behind file is compiled and instantiated when first requested by the client via an HTTP request. The .NET Web Form, which is the resulting .aspx form, is returned to the client as an HTML file and is also cached on the Web server for reuse.

In general, you typically use the ASPX page primarily to define the user view. You do your imports, define classes, specify event handling, initialization and instantiation, declare your functions, code your business and process logic, and so on, in the code-behind file.

Modifications to the user view as provided in the ASPX page are accomplished in two ways:

The Open Client User Controls are a set of VB.NET .ascx files provided by FileNet that, in conjunction with Control Factory controls and the .NET server controls (and associated .NET classes), provide the building blocks of the Open Client user interface (the "View" part of the MVC model). Open Client User Controls either display the data, or they represent available operations for the displayed data, or some combination of these. Each User Control defines its data format (for example, XML for Process controls).

In addition to the Open Client User controls, you can also use the standard .NET controls and .NET class libraries to help customize the user interface defined in the ASPX page. The .NET Framework comprises over 3,400 standard classes that you can apply (in addition to the Open Client User Controls) to the ASPX page in order to help customize the user interface (by comparison for those new to the .NET Framework, there are seven standard objects built-in in an ordinary ASP Framework — the Application, ASPError, ObjectContext, Request, Response, Server, and Session objects). Normally, you would use the .NET controls and classes in those instances where the presentation element was not already provided by an available User Control.

ASPX programming is performed in a manner comparable to the way Visual Basic programmers traditionally create Windows applications. The typical Windows programmer builds a Windows form by first adding a form to the project, then dragging a control onto the form, then double-clicking on the control and writing the code behind the form. If you use Visual Studio, for example, you create the .NET Web Form in much the same way, dragging in and double-clicking on either the Open Client-provided User Control ("Web Control" in Visual Studio), or the .NET-provided control, then writing the code which is included in the .aspx.vb code-behind file.

Guidelines on Creating the ASPX Page

The following guidelines apply when creating an ASPX page for Open Client:

Guidelines on Creating the ASPX Code-Behind File

The following general guidelines apply when creating an .aspx.vb code-behind file for Open Client:

Guidelines and Issues on Creating FileNet Open Client ASPX Pages

If you are developing an FileNet Open Client application, you will be using JiGlue to provide the COM Bridge between the Data Providers and Process services (the JiGlue COM Bridge provides the ability to make VB.NET calls to the Java API with the effect of native Java statements for most Win32 programming tasks). There are a number of JiGlue and COM-related issues to keep in mind when creating your ASPX pages and User Controls, including:

will fail in some cases. If failure does occur, the symptoms and exceptions can be obscure.

For additional information on JiGlue (including guidelines and the JiGlue COM Bridge conversions between COM data types and Java data types), see the Help for Process Development guide.