The Basics¶

Setting up¶

Download and import the Javascript CHAOS.Portal Client into your site. The client is a single .js-file which can be found in the src folder of the project’s Github repository.

<script src="CHAOS.Portal.Client.PortalClient.js" type="text/javascript"></script>

The first thing we need to do is to instantiate the client.

// Setup settings
var ChaosSettings = {
  "servicePath":"http://api.chaos-systems.com/",
  "clientGUID":"9f62060c-64ff-e14f-a8d5-d85a1e2e21b8",
  "accessPointGUID":"7A06C4FF-D15A-48D9-A908-088F9796AF28",
};
// Instantiate client
var client = new PortalClient(
                   ChaosSettings.servicePath,
                   ChaosSettings.clientGUID
                 );

servicePath is the URL at which your CHAOS.Portal is set up.
clientGUID should be unique for each application, any GUID can be used.
accessPointGUID is an ID that authenticates us to use the CHAOS.Portal. This should be given to you by your friendly neighbourhood CHAOS.Portal administrator.

Instantiating the PortalClient this way automatically sets up a session. When the session has been set up we are ready to use the CHAOS.Portal.

We can add callbacks to PortalClient.SessionAcquired() in order to do work when the session has been set up:

client.SessionAcquired().Add(function(sender, sessionGUID) {
      alert("Session created: " + sessionGUID);
});

Now we are ready to get some objects!

Searching¶

The easiest way to retrieve some objects from a CHAOS database is to search. You can do this with the function PortalClient.Object_GetBySearch()

// Add search schemas
var fields = [
  "5906a41b-feae-48db-bfb7-714b3e105396",
  "00000000-0000-0000-0000-000063c30000",
  "00000000-0000-0000-0000-000065c30000"
];
// Retrieve objects
client.SessionAcquired().Add(function(sender, sessionGUID) {
  client.Object_GetBySearch(showObjects, // callback
    {
      query: "mut"
    , schemas: fields
    , langCode: "da"
    , sort: null
    , accessPointGUID: ChaosSettings.accessPointGUID
    , pageIndex: 0
    , pageSize: 3
    , includeMetadata: true
    , includeFiles: true
    , includeObjectRelations: true
    , includeAccessPoints: false
    }
  );
});

function showObjects(serviceResult) {
  var count = serviceResult.MCM().Count();
  var totalcount = serviceResult.MCM().TotalCount();
  alert("Got " + count + "/" + totalcount + " objects");
}

fields: are search fields to use in the Solr index. The long GUIDs refers to metadata schemas. So what we’re doing here is searching the object metadata for the word ‘mut’.
pageIndex: is the starting page of the search results, where the page size is determined by pageSize
pageSize: is the number of results you want retrieve
includeFiles: include files attached to objects in the results.
includeMetadata: include metadata attached to objects in the results.
includeObjectRelations: include object relations for an object in the results.

When the search results has been recieved from the CHAOS.Portal, the callback is invoked with serviceResult as its argument. The serviceResult has a number of fields, of which MCM() is the most important and the one we are going to be using.

serviceResult.MCM().Results(): The result of the CHAOS query: A list of objects (URL, metadata etc.). An explaination of these objects is found in the next section.
serviceResult.MCM().Count(): The number of objects on this page, i.e. the number of objects available to you in the serviceResult.MCM().Results().<br> If you want all the objects from a query at once you will have to increase the pageSize or go through all pages via pageIndex.
serviceResult.MCM().TotalCount(): The number of objects that matched the query

Now the resulting objects are quite big, so let’s only grab one, by setting pageSize to 1:

// Retrieve objects
client.SessionAcquired().Add(function(sender, sessionGUID) {
  client.Object_GetBySearch(showObjects, // callback
    {
      query: "mut"
    , schemas: "5906a41b-feae-48db-bfb7-714b3e105396"
    , langCode: "da"
    , sort: null
    , accessPointGUID: ChaosSettings.accessPointGUID
    , pageIndex: 0
    , pageSize: 1
    , includeMetadata: true
    , includeFiles: true
    , includeObjectRelations: true
    , includeAccessPoints: false
    }
  );
});

function showObjects(serviceResult) {
  var json_result = serviceResult.MCM().Results();

  // The code below is simply for showing you the JSON results
  var string_result = JSON.stringify(json_result, null, '\t').replace('<', '&lt;').replace('>', '&gt;')
  $('#search-results').data('codeMirror').setValue(string_result);
}

Results:

// The result should look something like this
[
  {
    "GUID": "00000000-0000-0000-0000-00004e040016",
    "ObjectTypeID": 36,
    "DateCreated": -2147483648,
    "Metadatas": [
      {
        "GUID": "29d669cf-c3e5-4749-beb9-20bb7ac18b05",
        "EditingUserGUID": "80d15fb4-c1fb-9445-89c6-1a398cbd85e5",
        "LanguageCode": "da",
        "MetadataSchemaGUID": "5906a41b-feae-48db-bfb7-714b3e105396",
        "RevisionID": 1,
        "MetadataXML": "<some><xml><data></data></xml></some>",
        "DateCreated": -2147483648,
        "FullName": "CHAOS.MCM.Data.DTO.Metadata"
      }
      //, ... more metadata
    ],
    "Files": [
      {
        "ID": 506457,
        "ParentID": null,
        "Filename": "db_fo_sa_00564.jpg",
        "OriginalFilename": "db_fo_sa_00564.jpg",
        "Token": "HTTP Download",
        "URL": "http://example.org/some/url/to/a/file.jpg",
        "FormatID": 42,
        "Format": "KB Source JPEG ",
        "FormatCategory": "Image Source",
        "FormatType": "Image",
        "FullName": "CHAOS.MCM.Data.DTO.FileInfo"
      }
      //, ... more files
    ],
    "ObjectRelations": [],
    "FullName": "CHAOS.MCM.Data.DTO.Object"
  }
]

What you can see here is that we get a list of objects. Each object has a GUID and an ObjectTypeID. Furthermore we can see that each object has a list of files and a list of metadata.

Try turning off and on includeFiles and includeMetadata and changing pageSize and pageIndex in order to familiarize yourself with the interface. Unfortunately this object has no relations.

You are now ready to head on to the next section, which will teach you how to use files and metadata.

CHAOS API v4

The Basics¶

Setting up¶

Searching¶