A LibreOffice Online Edit Module for Alfresco

This module is sponsored by Redpill Linpro AB - http://www.redpill-linpro.com.

Description

The module is an addon to Alfresco which makes it possible to edit documents online in LibreOffice over CMIS from the browser. This allows for a seamless integration of the open source document suite LibreOffice with Alfresco, making it easy to adopt an open source alternative for document management in your organization.

This module consists of three sub-modules, one module which produces a signed Java applet, one module which produces a Firefox Addon and the last one creates an Alfresco Share customization module.

The Java applet is used to launch LibreOffice and is included in the customization module. After LibreOffice has been launched the applet is closed and everything after that is LibreOffice doing its work.

The Java applet is signed using a self-signed certificate. See instructions in the "Building" section on how to sign the build with your own certificates.

The Firefox Addon can be used to launch LibreOffice. If installed it will be the first choise for Firefox users. If it not installed, or disabled, the Java applet will be used instead.

Further detailed instructions will be added to the Wiki.

Localization

Translations of the following languages are distributed along with this module:

English
Swedish
Danish
Norwegian
German
Russian
French
Dutch
Spanish

Thanks to everyone who has contributed with localizations of this module. If you are missing a language, please create a translation and make a pull request and it will be included in the package.

Compatibility

The module is tested with Alfresco Enterprise 4.1.7.3 and 4.2.0 but may work with other versions of Alfresco Enterprise and Community.

It has been verified to work with Ubuntu Linux (14.04), Windows 7, MacOSX (10.9.5).

Other client requirements for the module are (other versions may work but is untested):

LibreOffice 4.3.1 or later is installed
Java 1.7 available as a browser plugin and that java is allowed to run signed applets.
For Alfresco SSL endpoints, only valid certificates will work. Self signed certificates on the Alfresco side will not work.

Building

This module is based on the Alfresco Maven SDK and requires Maven >= 3.0.4, a Java 1.7 compatible compiler (eg. Oracle JDK or OpenJDK). You will also need git to clone the repository. The master branch will always hold the latest stable version of the module.

Cloning the repository:

git clone git://github.com/Redpill-Linpro/alfresco-libreoffice-online-edit.git

Building with maven:

mvn clean package

Module is packaged as amp and the resulting amp will end up in ./libreoffice-online-edit-share/target/

Signing the Java applet with your own certificates:

To sign the Java applet with your own certificates, create a new keystore and change the configuration in ./libreoffice-launcher-applet/pom.xml with your own keystore settings and rerun the build script.

  <configuration>
    <keystore>src/main/keystore/signing-jar.keystore</keystore>
    <alias>applet</alias>
    <storepass>applet</storepass>
    <keypass>applet</keypass>
  </configuration>

Configuration

This module relies on that the Alfresco Share setting "libreoffice-cmis-base-url" is set in the Alfresco Share configuration.

An example configuration: Edit (or create the file if it does not exist) tomcat/shared/classes/alfresco/web-extension/share-config-custom.xml.

Please note that this section has changed since the 1.1.0 release of this module. This setting now points to the cmis endpoint to use, not the Alfresco context. The endpoint address for Alfresco 4.2.x is usually http://localhost:8080/alfresco/api/-default-/public/cmis/versions/1.0/atom. For Alfresco 4.1.x it is usually http://localhost:8080/alfresco/cmisws/RepositoryService?wsdl or http://localhost:8080/alfresco/cmisatom.

<alfresco-config>
	...
	<config evaluator="string-compare" condition="DocumentLibrary" replace="true">
		<libreoffice-cmis-base-url>http://localhost:8080/alfresco/api/-default-/public/cmis/versions/1.0/atom</libreoffice-cmis-base-url>
	</config>
	...
</alfresco-config>

Installation

To install this module in Alfresco use the Alfresco Module Management tool. Note The module is a share module and should only be installed in Alfresco Share.

Upload the amp file to your amps_share directory in your Alfresco installation.
Stop Alfresco Share
Run java -jar bin/alfresco-mmt.jar install amps_share/libreoffice-online-edit-share-x.x.x.amp tomcat/webapps/share.war
Clean out temporary share files and old unpackaded share war (remove tomcat/webapps/share and tomcat/work/Catalina)
Start Alfresco Share
Activate the module from the Share Module Deployment page: http://localhost:8080/share/page/modules/deploy

Usage

After the module has been activated, you should have a new action available to you in the document library and in the document details page. Click it to open the document with LibreOffice.

If you use Firefox you will get a message suggesting that you should download and install the Firefox Addon to launch LibreOffice. If the module is not installed, the fallback solution is to use the Java Applet.

Known issues

Currently no known issues

License

This application is licensed under the LGPLv3 License. See the LICENSE file for details.

Authors

Marcus Svensson - Redpill Linpro AB

ncutlh/alfresco-libreoffice-online-edit