My first content app

This tutorial guides you through the process of creating a content app in Magnolia. The app you create is called the Bookshelf app and you create it as a Magnolia light module from a custom content type definition.

Tutorial overview

The tutorial consists of three pages:

My first content app – This page, which describes the Bookshelf app.
Part I - Creating a basic content app – Shows how to install Magnolia with Magnolia CLI and create the basic Bookshelf app from a content type definition.
Part II - Fine-tuning a basic content app – Provides instructions to turn the basic app into the final and ready-to-use Bookshelf app.

Going through the tutorial you learn:

How to define content types and use them to quickly create a content app.
The basics of configuring fields and setting field validators.
How to override configuration properties.
How to make the elements of the app's UI ready for internationalization.

If you want to skip the tutorial and install the final app immediately, clone the repository containing the ready-made Bookshelf app as a light module directly into your Magnolia light module folder with the command:

git clone -b release/6.0 --single-branch https://git.magnolia-cms.com/scm/documentation/bookshelf.git

Bookshelf app use case

The Bookshelf app you create in this tutorial is an example of content app. It is a simple book catalog allowing the user to store bibliographic data about each book: its title, the names of the author(s), publisher's name and the ISBN-13 number. The app also allows you to group selected book items into folders called shelves in the app.

What is a content app?

A Content app is a specialized app type for managing structured content. The content app user interface consists of a browser subapp and one or more detail subapps. Content apps make it easy to enter items such as products or events. Many native Magnolia apps such as Tours and Contacts are content apps. Because this app style is used often, the framework provides convenience classes to make building a content app faster.

Bookshelf app subapps

The Bookshelf app consists of two subapps.

Book browser

In the Book Browser subapp, you can:

Browse in the book catalog.
Add, rename and delete books.
Add, rename and delete shelves (folders for organizing books).

Book detail

The Book Detail subapp is a place where you can create and edit a book's bibliographic properties using text fields and a checkbox field.

Book properties

For each book item, the Bookshelf app stores and retrieves the following content properties:

Short cataloging name (a required content property).
Full book title.
Author(s)' name(s).
Whether the author(s) role is editorial or not.
Book description.
Publisher's name.
ISBN-13 number.

Bookshelf app and Magnolia content types

The Bookshelf app is based on Magnolia content types. Expand the following link to see more details about the app's design parameters.

Click to see details.

The `books` workspace

Magnolia stores content in the magnolia repository, a JCR repository that is divided into workspaces. The Bookshelf app is to store all books in a new workspace called books.

Custom `lib:book` node type

In the books workspace, each book is a custom lib:book node type defined for this tutorial.

Content properties

Each book of the lib:book type can have the following content properties:

Property name	Usage	Data type	Restriction
`authors`	Name(s) of the author(s) of the book.	String	none
`ed`	The property to store the `true` value if the primary role of the Author(s) is editorial.	Boolean	none
`title`	Official book title.	String	none
`description`	Description of what the book is about.	String	5000 characters max.
`publisher`	Book publisher's name.	String	none
`publish_date`	Date of publication of the book.	Date	Display format: `YYYY-MM-DD`
`isbn13`	International Standard Book Number in the 13-character variant.	String	13 characters The first 12 characters can only be numerals, the last character can be a numeral or "X". The first three numerals can only be either "978" or "979". We don't need to perform the validity check against the number's checksum digit.

The `name` property

When you create an app from a content type definition, the name property is generated automatically. Then the JCR node name is automatically deduced from the name.

We make use of this auto-generated name property in the Bookshelf app by:

Setting it to be a required property.
Referring to it via the Cataloging name label in user dialogs.
Using it for creating a short and hyphenated book identifier (JCR node name) such as:
```
Hawking-2005-God-Created-the-Integers
```
Therefore, in the Bookshelf app, the data in the Cataloging name field must be entered using the following syntax:
```
<first-author's-surname> <publication-year> <short-form-of-the-book's-full-title>
```
For example:
```
Hawking 2005 God Created the Integers
```
Magnolia automatically replaces the spaces with hyphens when creating a node name from the name property.

Book data in the books workspace and in the Book Detail subapp

Compare the following images, which show an example book item of type lib:book and its various bibliographic data stored in the books repository as seen through the interface of JCR Browser app (on the left), and the book data in the fields of the Book Detail subapp (on the right). Note especially the correspondences between the property names in the books workspace and the fields in the Book Details tab:

On the next page, you create a basic Bookshelf app.

Page tree