The atg.endeca.assembler.configuration.AssemblerApplicationConfiguration class provides a central place for calculating and storing Workbench and MDEX host and port information. This information complements the information contained in the /atg/endeca/ApplicationConfiguration component and allows the Assembler to communicate with Workbench applications and MDEX instances. The ATG-Endeca integration includes a component of the AssemblerApplicationConfiguration class, /atg/endeca/assembler/AssemblerApplicationConfiguration, that other components use to retrieve Workbench and MDEX connection details. This section provides information on how the AssemblerApplicationConfiguration component identifies the correct Workbench application and MDEX to connect to. The sections after provide details on the components that reference this information.
Creating Application-specific Workbench Connections
Note: This section introduces the WorkbenchContentSource and DefaultWorkbenchContentSource components, in the context of what the AssemblerApplicationConfiguration component does with them. Additional information is provided about these component types in the following sections.
The /atg/endeca/assembler/cartridge/manager/WorkbenchContentSource component holds details for a particular Endeca application’s connection to a Workbench application (or, to be more specific, it functions as an alias for other components that calculate the connection details based on the environment and the current request). It is an Endeca requirement that a globally-scoped com.endeca.infront.content.source.WorkbenchContentSource object be instantiated for each Workbench application in your environment before any content requests are made. Environments that have multiple Endeca applications, for example, to support multiple languages, will have multiple Workbench applications and, therefore, will need multiple WorkbenchContentSource components. The AssemblerApplicationConfiguration component is responsible for creating these components when necessary.
To create the application-specific WorkbenchContentSource components, the AssemblerApplicationConfiguration component resolves a prototype-scoped /atg/endeca/assembler/cartridge/manager/PrototypeWorkbenchContentSource component, which is of class atg.endeca.assembler.content.ExtendedWorkbenchContentSource, and inserts it into the Nucleus global scope under a new name that follows this pattern:
WorkbenchContentSource_Endeca-application-key
Adding the Endeca-application-key to the end of the WorkbenchContentSource component name uniquely identifies the correct WorkbenchContentSource to use for each Endeca application.
The PrototypeWorkbenchContentSource configuration includes a $basedOn property that references the /atg/endeca/assembler/cartridge/manager/DefaultWorkbenchContentSource component, where arguments for the WorkbenchContentSource constructor are provided. The PrototypeWorkbenchContentSource component gets its settings from the DefaultWorkbenchContent component, with the exception of the Endeca application name, which it gets from the AssemblerApplicationConfiguration component’s currentInitializingWorkbenchContentSourceApplicationName property.
Calculating Which MDEX to Use
The AssemblerApplicationConfiguration component is responsible for determining which host name and port to use to connect to the correct MDEX engine for any given request. The /atg/endeca/assembler/cartridge/manager/MdexResource component, which represents the connection to a single MDEX, can then refer to the AssemblerApplicationConfiguration when creating a connection for a specific request.
The MDEX host and port values are stored in the AssemblerApplicationConfiguration.currentMdexHostname and AssemblerApplicationConfiguration.currentMdexPort properties, respectively. The AssemblerApplicationConfiguration component includes configuration settings that specify how the currentMdexHost and currentMdex port properties are calculated.
Typically, if your application uses a single MDEX, you set the defaultMdexHostName and defaultMdexPort properties of the AssemblerApplicationConfiguration component to the host and port for that MDEX, for example:
defaultMdexHostName=localhost
defaultMdexPort=15000
The AssemblerApplicationConfiguration then uses the defaultMdexHostName and defaultMdexPort settings to set the currentMdexHostName and currentMdexPort properties.
If your application uses multiple MDEX engines, for example, one MDEX for each language, you must configure the applicationKeyToMdexHostAndPort property. This property contains a map where the keys identify each Endeca application and the values specify the host names and port numbers for the MDEX engines associated with each application. For example, if your environment has two Endeca applications to support two languages, English and German, the applicationKeyToMdexHostAndPort would be set as follows:
applicationKeyToMdexHostAndPort=\
en=host-for-English-MDEX:port-for-English-MDEX\
de=host-for-German-MDEX:port-for-German-MDEX
To calculate which MDEX host and port to use, the AssemblerApplicationConfiguration component retrieves the Endeca application key for the current request from the ApplicationConfiguration component, and then uses that key to retrieve the correct host and port values from the applicationKeyToMdexHostAndPort map. To enable the call to the ApplicationConfiguration component, the AssemblerApplicationConfiguration component includes the following required property:
applicationConfiguration=../ApplicationConfiguration
Note: For more details, on the ApplicationConfiguration component, see the Configuring the ApplicationConfiguration Component section
