PeopleTools 8.51 Now Generally Available

PeopleTools 8.51 is now Generally Available (meaning, you can download it from eDelivery). You can find the hosted PeopleBooks for 8.51 here. The PeopleTools 8.51 documentation home is here.

URL Administration (Nodes and URL Definitions)

I use URL's quite extensively for Ajax and other non-Integration Broker integrations (NEVER HARD CODE URL'S!). PeopleTools provides a couple of ways to store URL information. The most well-known of these features is the URL definition (PeopleTools > Utilities > Administration > URLs). URL Definitions are great for relative URL's, but I'm not fond of storing fully qualified URL's in this manner. Here is why...

Imagine having 5 URL's that point to different resources on the same server and then one day the server's host name changes. Because of this change I have to modify 5 URL definitions. What if I forget one?

An alternative is to store the base URL in a node definition and then the relative portion of the URL in a URL definition. Creating a fully qualified URL in this manner requires concatenating two definitions: the node URI and the URL definition. Next Question: How do I access these Meta-data objects from PeopleCode? Most of us are familiar with the GetURL PeopleCode function, but what mechanism does PeopleCode offer for retrieving a node's Content and Portal URI?

A PeopleSoft instance's node definitions are accessible through the %Session object. The Session object contains a method named GetNodes which returns a collection of the instance's node definitions. A call to the collections FindItemByName method returns a reference to a single node, which, of course, has properties of its own. Putting this all together, returning the Portal URI of a node named UCM would require PeopleCode that looks something like:

Local string &serverUrl = %Session.GetNodes().ItemByName("UCM").PortalURI;

By centralizing the base portion of the URL in a node definition, we save some administration overhead.