Export Rules

This is a new feature of the org.opencms.staticexport.CmsAfterPublishStaticExportHandler (also used wenn calling the static export tool in the Administration View). So to be able to take advantage of this feature you have to set your default static export handler to this. That is, your static export handler definition in the ${CONTEXT_NAME}/WEB-INF/config/opencms-importexport.xml configuration file should look like:

    <staticexporthandler>org.opencms.staticexport.CmsAfterPublishStaticExportHandler</staticexporthandler>

An export rule let you specify a set of resources to export if a modified resource matches a set of rules. And the main idea behind it, is to optimize the needed time used to do an static export after publish. Until now, every time a resource has been published, OpenCms mades a static export of all resources in the vfs! (at least all resources matched by the <regex> patterns in the <resourcetorender> node) since there was no possibility to know the dependencies of a file. So, this new feature lets OpenCms know which are the dependencies of a set of resources.

The export rules as also all the other configuration settings for the Static Export Feature should be given in the ${CONTEXT_NAME}/WEB-INF/config/opencms-importexport.xml configuration file.

An export rule needs following data.

• Name: The name of the rule 
• Description: A precise description of the uses of this rule
• Modified-Resources: One or more regular expressions that should specify a set of resources. If one of this resources becomes published, all resources specified by the <export-resources> node will be exported again.
• Export-Resources: One or more uri (resources or folders) indicating a set of resources to be exported if any of the resources specified with the <modified-resources> node becomes published.

Here the two most common application cases:

• Imagine you have some template resources under /system/modules/mymodule/template/, and the pages that use this template are under /sites/mysite/, so we want an export rule that should be able to export all pages under /sites/mysite/ if any template resources in /system/modules/mymodule/template/ is published. Such an export rule for this situation would look like:

      <export-rule>
          <name>mysite-template</name>
          <description>This rule will export all resources under /sites/mysite/,
                       if any resource under /system/modules/mymodule/template/ is modified</description>
          <modified-resources>
              <regex>/system/modules/mymodule/template/.*</regex>
          </modified-resources>
          <export-resources>
              <uri>/sites/mysite/</uri>
          </export-resources>
      </export-rule>
  

• The second common situation is to have some XML-content like news under /sites/mysite/modules/news/ and you display this news in an index.html and a news.html file, i.e. we want an export rule that should be able to export the index.html and the news.html files if any resource in /sites/mysite/modules/news/ becomes published. A rule for this situation would look like:

      <export-rule>
          <name>mysite-news</name>
          <description>This rule will export the index.html and the news.html files in folder /sites/mysite/,
                       if any resource under /sites/mysite/modules/news/ is modified</description>
          <modified-resources>
              <regex>sites/mysite/modules/news/.*</regex>
          </modified-resources>
          <export-resources>
              <uri>/sites/mysite/index.html</uri>
              <uri>/sites/mysite/news.html</uri>
          </export-resources>
      </export-rule>
  

The default behaviour is still the same as before, if a published resource does not match any rule, all vfs resources that match the <resourcetorender> node regular expressions, will be exported. Keep also in mind that if you specify an <export-resources> uri that does not match the <resourcetorender> node regular expressions, it will not be exported. So keep your <resourcetorender> node regularexpressions synchronized with your  <export-resources> uris.

Please also note that if a resource is exported having a link to another resource, the last one will only be exported if it is also part of the <export-resources> set.