Activation module

The Activation module publishes content from an author instance to a public instance. In Magnolia 4.5 this module is called Exchange Simple.

Download

The Activation module is bundled with Magnolia and typically already installed. You can download it from our Nexus repository

Installing

Activation is a Community Edition module and typically already installed. Launch the Configuration app and go to /modules/activation to check.

Uninstalling

How activation works

On the author instance, a Syndicator collects the content that needs to be activated. It stores the content into an ActivationContent object. The default BaseSyndicatorImpl can activate content to any public instance that is configured as a subscriber. The configuration details of each subscriber are held in a Subscriber Java bean at runtime. When you trigger an activation command, the syndicator creates an ActivationContent object and sends it to each subscriber. There are two variations of ActivationContent: current content and versioned content. In this context, Content is defined by the filtering Rule used to collect all the child nodes that are still considered to be part of the content for any given activation.

On the public instance, the Activation filter receives the content. The filter acts on the incoming request and saves the data into the repository.

Magnolia supports two methods of activating content

• Non-recursive activates only the selected node and its properties.
• Recursive activates the selected node, its properties and its children.

Activation is authenticated using public-key cryptography. See Activation security for more information.

Configuration

The Activation module is configured in Configuration > /modules/activation.

Activate and deactivate commands

Users typically activate content by clicking Publish in the action bar. The click executes an activate command which pushes the content from the author instance to subscriber instances. Conversely, when users click  Unpublish the system executes a deactivate command which deletes the content from public instances.

The activate and deactivate commands are configured in /modules/activation/commands. The default catalog contains commands which just publish the content without versioning. Magnolia also provides a versioned command catalog. It contains identically named activate and deactivate commands which first version the content and then delegate to the default commands.

To use one of these commands, define the catalog and the command name in the action definition. See an example in Executing commands with actions.

Activation log storage

The activationLogStorage  property defines where information about activations are logged. The default implementation  MemoryActivationStorage keeps the information in memory.

Troubleshooting

• Instances are not in sync