Getting Started not really enough?

[Tako Schotanus <ta...@codejive.org>]

Hi,

I'm new to Sling and this list although I've known about Sling for some time
now (from Jukka and David at Day), but only yesterday I decided to try using
it.

And I must say it has been a mixed experience.

It's a pity that the latest binary download is already quite dated but
building it yourself is indeed not too difficult.

But for me that wasn't the main problem. I just wanted to play around with
Sling and getting it up and running is indeed very easy using the Getting
Started tutorial.
Except it seems that's all it is good for: getting up and running, after
that there is a big gaping hole on how to proceed.
There's lots of really technical information and a small tutorial for a toy
blog that's quite useful, but I'm missing lots of information about the
basic ideas behind Sling, best practices and just how to continue.

One of the first things I wanted to for example was to change the
administrator password because I deployed the war on a public server. After
some searches I found some information about a REST interface that could be
used for the purpose with some curl commands (and only an hour ago I found
that there was a FAQ entry). This is hardly easy, is it? There is an
extensive administration console, but it lacks something that seems so
essential? And it should at least be mentioned in the Getting Started
document because you don't want people to deploy unsecured applications.

The next thing would be to start editing content, which logically (to me at
least) should explain how to change the default landing page. Then a section
to start setting up a website would be useful.

I wonder if there are any plans to provide that kind of information? I
understand Sling is used extensively within Day for its projects but I have
this nagging feeling that it was "thrown online" just to make it accessible
but without much thought about making it easy for "outsiders" to use.

Ok, I'll shut up now because this has turned much more into a rant than I
wanted to :)

Any tips to get up end running would be greatly appreciated!

Cheers,
-Tako


PS: So far I STILL haven't been able to change the password. The curl
command returns a 200 saying it completed successfully but it still allows
me to log in with the old password. And the part in the FAQ about the
/system/console/configMgr just doesn't make any sense to me. Help! :)

Re: Getting Started not really enough?

[Justin Edelson <ju...@gmail.com>]

On 6/30/10 8:13 AM, Tako Schotanus wrote:
> And do you have any idea what I'm doing wrong while trying to change the
> admin password? I just can't get it to work.

The instructions on the FAQ work for me. Starting with an empty
repository and the default bundles:

curl http://admin:admin@localhost:8888/index.html - works
curl http://admin:badpwd@localhost:8888/index.html - returns login form

curl -F"oldPwd=admin" -F"newPwd=Fritz" -F"newPwdConfirm=Fritz"
http://admin:admin@localhost:8888/system/userManager/user/admin.changePassword.html


curl http://admin:admin@localhost:8888/index.html - returns login form
curl http://admin:Frtiz@localhost:8888/index.html - works

You can safely ignore the bit in the FAQ about updating the admin
password in the web console. That no longer applies.

As Bertrand said, if the above steps don't work for you, please post
some addition details (ideally under a new subject line to help
findability).

Justin

Re: Getting Started not really enough?

[Bertrand Delacretaz <bd...@apache.org>]

On Wed, Jun 30, 2010 at 2:13 PM, Tako Schotanus <ta...@codejive.org> wrote:
> Ok, that's great to hear :)
>
> But any tips you could give right now for somebody who is only beginning?
> Some places where to find more information? Examples? Etc?...

The espblog sample is probably the most complete example we have now,
if you understand how it works that should be a good starting point.
You might want to try to modify it instead from starting from scratch,
that's usually easier.

>
> And do you have any idea what I'm doing wrong while trying to change the
> admin password? I just can't get it to work.

I don't know the details of that module, best would be to send another
short email to this list with just that question. Show which exact
curl command you use, what you expect and what you get, so that
someone can help you or at least reproduce your problem - I don't
think there's enough info in this thread for that.

-Bertrand

Re: Getting Started not really enough?

[Tako Schotanus <ta...@codejive.org>]

Ok, that's great to hear :)

But any tips you could give right now for somebody who is only beginning?
Some places where to find more information? Examples? Etc?

And do you have any idea what I'm doing wrong while trying to change the
admin password? I just can't get it to work.

Thanks :)
-Tako


On Wed, Jun 30, 2010 at 14:02, Bertrand Delacretaz
<bd...@apache.org>wrote:

> Hi,
>
> On Wed, Jun 30, 2010 at 1:32 PM, Tako Schotanus <ta...@codejive.org> wrote:
> > ...I wonder if there are any plans to provide that kind of information? I
> > understand Sling is used extensively within Day for its projects but I
> have
> > this nagging feeling that it was "thrown online" just to make it
> accessible
> > but without much thought about making it easy for "outsiders" to use....
>
> Your nagging feeling is wrong ;-)
>
> Sling is successfully used in solid projects outside of Day, see
> https://cwiki.apache.org/SLING/who-is-using-sling-.html
>
> I agree that's not a big crowd, and part of that might be related to
> our suboptimal documentation and examples. They've been steadily
> improving, but as you have noticed there are still weak spots.
>
> As you say, we are lacking a complete application example beyond the
> espblog sample. That is precisely the goal of the Google Summer of
> Code project that I'm mentoring: to create a mini-CMS that goes beyond
> our basic examples and demonstrates Sling best practices. Follow our
> dev list (especially messages from our student Federico) for more info
> - I hope this project will help make Sling more accessible to more web
> programmers.
>
> -Bertrand
>

Re: Getting Started not really enough?

[Bertrand Delacretaz <bd...@apache.org>]

Hi,

On Wed, Jun 30, 2010 at 1:32 PM, Tako Schotanus <ta...@codejive.org> wrote:
> ...I wonder if there are any plans to provide that kind of information? I
> understand Sling is used extensively within Day for its projects but I have
> this nagging feeling that it was "thrown online" just to make it accessible
> but without much thought about making it easy for "outsiders" to use....

Your nagging feeling is wrong ;-)

Sling is successfully used in solid projects outside of Day, see
https://cwiki.apache.org/SLING/who-is-using-sling-.html

I agree that's not a big crowd, and part of that might be related to
our suboptimal documentation and examples. They've been steadily
improving, but as you have noticed there are still weak spots.

As you say, we are lacking a complete application example beyond the
espblog sample. That is precisely the goal of the Google Summer of
Code project that I'm mentoring: to create a mini-CMS that goes beyond
our basic examples and demonstrates Sling best practices. Follow our
dev list (especially messages from our student Federico) for more info
- I hope this project will help make Sling more accessible to more web
programmers.

-Bertrand