Posted by mysty@drupal.org on September 12, 2008 at 11:13am
Now that [edit Solr ] apachesolr has moved on considerably, I was wondering if anyone has used it's full text indexing of documents combined with the taxonomy, and access control of drupal as part of a DMS.
I tried this a year ago, couldnt get it working and ended up with a Knowledge Tree/Drupal integrated solution, which seems good at the time, but in use was too disparate. I want it in Drupal (!), not another system.
So I was now thinking cck/filefield + [edit solr ] apachesolr.
Any thoughts?
Thanks in advance,
mysty
Comments
It's on my list
I am working on a DMS with drupal+cck+filefield+webserver_auth. I am planning to look into Solr, but haven't yet.
Just a couple notes. The apachesolr module seems to be more active than the solr module that you linked to. Also, you might want to look at the Lucene, Nutch and Solr group.
I hope this will add useful search functionality to drupal.
You are right, I was mixing
You are right, I was mixing the solr and apachesolr projects up.
Thanks for setting me straight, this helps to avoid less fruitful avenues of exploration.
Drupal 6 and Knowledgetree?
What is your latest view of drupal document management and drupal forum solutions? I'm thinking of using Knowledgetree for DMS with drupal forum but would prefer a full drupal solution.
Any comments will be appreciated.
It depends on your needs
I am curious what mysty thinks about this now.
Personally, I think it depends on what your requirements are. If you want the DMS integrated into the users' Office apps, I think you would want/need to use something beside or in addition to drupal.
I am using drupal + CCK, Filefield, Views... as a document repository so when a document is released it gets uploaded to drupal. That way drupal provides easy access to any documents. Drupal handles basic revision records easily.
I am not using it for any kind of collaboration or detailed revision records.
I hope this helps.
document revision
OK - I have a very simple and similar need.
My new Boss wants me to create a site for managing projects (he wants to use SharePoint... I want to use Drupal.) Mostly this entails...
(1) Uploading a document.
(2) Appending comments to that document record (not inside the document, but appended to the record/node where the document is uploaded.)
(3) Downloading the document, making changes and uploading it again (so... like record version history.)
He knows that SharePoint can save a document and if the document is downloaded, edited and uploaded into the record again, he knows it can keep a version history. I... think... the version history part (essentially, keeping copies of the document) is not as critical as being able to associate comments with the document record/node.
Is this possible? OK, it is sort of a two-part question then...
(1) Do I use CCK, Filefield and Views to create the "document library" and what do I have to do to enable a version history on those records/nodes?
(2) How could I associated appending a comment on the records/ nodes like you append comments to a blog?
Any ideas?
Revision handling
Drupal has built in revision handling for nodes. Last time I checked, filefield also handled revisions by saving a copy of the file at each revision.
The node edit form includes a section called "Revision Information". This is where you can choose to create a new revision and enter a revision log message. I don't know what you want to do with the comments that you mentioned, but the revision log message might meet your needs. By default the revision log doesn't display on a node view, but it is available on the Revisions tab.
If you want to see an example of this, you can look at just about any drupal.org page. Here is an example http://drupal.org/node/342996 that shows a node view and you can click on "Revisions" and see comments from each revision.
Manual vs. automatic versioning
"This is where you can choose to create a new revision and enter a revision log message."
Problem is that you have to choose to create a new revision. Can pretty much guarantee people will forget most of the time. Need is for automatic versioning I believe. I know I have that need.
I experimented with filefield. It appears to treat different versions of the same file as if they were different files. So yes, if I upload foo.txt twice, the original version doesn't get overwritten, but doesn't show a version history or anything like that unless I enter version info into the description box (in which case it shows the description instead of the file name, rather than in addition). So not quite there either in terms of ordinary-user-friendliness.
For automatic versioning, you
For automatic versioning, you can easily force new revisions for every update by enabling "Create new revision" on the content type edit page.
If you want to require the user to enter a "Log message" for each revision, you will need a small module with a form_alter hook to make that field required.
It is true that drupal doesn't compare the contents of two revisions of a file, but you are able to access any version of the file.
Gack - that's too easy! I've
Gack - that's too easy! I've been away from Drupal for a while and starting to forget some of the bits and bobs.
how about dropbox
Hi!
My favorite tool to easily synchronize documents is dropbox.
I wish we could integrate dropbox inside a drupal site.
Any idea if it can be done and how?
File Framework + Workflow + Revisioning
I don't know what else a true DMS would offer, but this combination of contrib modules made my day with no effort (as long as you are familiar with FF which is an amazing and powerful file dedicate suite)
The missing thing would be a direct editing in office desktop software (I mean directly saving the file online) though DAV api should theoretically do that - but this is far from being a reliable method (MS managed to make DAV only working with SP apparently).