Config Editor - View or Modify any Configuration Object

Anyone who has worked with IDM knows about "Config-urator". Here's introducing Config-Editor - a utility to view and modify any type of configuration object.

Many times the values for these options need to be tweaked by the administrator or end-user. How do they do it? Do they edit the configuration object xml manually? Not only this involves tutoring them how to edit the xml's in the repository, which in turn requires exposing the debug/session pages, but also introduces the possibilities of errors.

Config-Editor solves these issues by offering a simple front-end to edit any type of configuration object. It is able to do this by employing a complex, but generic recursion process of traversing through a configuration object, thus generating a tree-based structure representing each element of the object. The result is a simple, user-friendly UI that is a breeze to work with.

• Simple to install (just import the xml files and optionally copy a jsp).
• Offers a simple GUI to view or modify any configuration object in a collapsable tree-based format.
• Eliminates the need to access secured areas such as the debug session pages.
• Reduces the possibility of errors by not requiring manual edits to configuration xml.
• Audits the detailed information on the changes made (old and new values) to the individual elements, changes-made-by and the time of update
• 508-compliant by eliminating the need to use DHTML for tree-structure generation.
• It is open-source, completely written in Xpress, hence further customizable (terms apply).

• Click here to download the zip file. It contains 2 xml's to be imported and 1 jsp that must be extracted within the IDM installation.
• Extract the files into the "task" directory of your IDM installation directory
• If you wish to provide a clickable sub-tab within the IDM administration console, modify the file: includes/bodyStart.jsp to include the downloaded file: bodyStart_tab_config_editor.jsp
  Add the following line above the line for <% String navBar = p.getMainNavigation(); (see image on right):

  <%@ include file="../task/bodyStart_tab_config_editor.jsp" %>

• Restart your application server
• Click on the "Server Tasks" tab → "Config-Editor" or run the task - TaskDefinition-ConfigEditor

• From the technical perspective, the code needed to achieve this functionality involves some of the most complex xpress-code-constructs. It requires parsing through a configuration object recursively from the root to the 'leaves' of the object-tree. As you see through the source code of the UserForm, you will find numerous field-references calling each other in circular loops with the perfect terminating conditions.
• The UI is generated by leveraging the fact that each configuration object in IDM consists of simple data elements such as String, Integer or Boolean, and complex data structures such as List, Map and Object. Each complex data structure can contain any other complex data structure and/or simple data elements. Recursion is the only way to build a generic solution to read such objects in their entirety.
• While attempts have been made to enforce datatype constraints, the functionality is only available if the configuration object is designed so. For example:

  
  <Attribute name='maxRetries'>
       <Integer>10</Integer>
  </Attribute>

  can have better datatype-enforcement compared to:

  <Attribute name='maxRetries' value='10' />

• Similar case is true for boolean (true/false) values:

  
  <Attribute name='enableAccount'>
       <Boolean>true</Boolean>
  </Attribute>

  can have better datatype-enforcement compared to:

  <Attribute name='enableAccount' value='true' />

  So, we suggest while creating a new configuration object, you design it in a way that better enforces the datatype-validity of its elements.
• There are some settings that can be tweaked to customize the functionality as per requirement. Please find the same under a variable "options" defined in the Xpress UserForm. It includes settings such as the list of configuration objects to make available to the user to edit, whether to always expand the tree-nodes, always collapse the tree-nodes, the max-length for textboxes in edit mode, etc.