Although My Documentum for Desktop is a nice product when you want a deeper integration with Windows, if you only need WebDAV access for browsing and creating documents it can be too much for the users. So I decided to develop a custom WebDAV server using a 1.x version of milton.io’s WebDAV library (newer 2.x free version doesn’t seem to work well with Office documents).

This library provides a WebDAV Servlet that you can customize for providing your own objects as WebDAV elements. I used CMIS (with Apache Chemistry) to query the repository and provide a WebDAV access to a Documentum repository. I wasn’t happy with the performance so I tried with the REST API as well.

The following is a comparison of features and code between those two implementations:

* Memory footprint: Although I’m still not sure of the source of the problem, CMIS consumes every Documentum session specified in dfc.properties. So if you have 100 max concurrent sessions, it’s going to use every single one. This is less noticeable when using a WebDAV client (session usage is between 7-20 sessions) but when using Windows integrated WebDAV client it goes crazy after 2nd level of folders. Not sure if it is due to windows querying every single object displayed or something related to CMIS specification or the implementation in emc-cmis.war

** Ease of implementation: When using CMIS with Apache Chemistry, you can code every single operation with a couple of lines of code.

Using the REST API will require a little bit more coding (I used org.json library to parse the responses):

Create document

• CMIS:

Folder tempFolder=(Folder)session.getObjectByPath(path);
Map<String, Object> properties = new HashMap<String, Object>();
properties.put(PropertyIds.OBJECT_TYPE_ID, "dm_document");
properties.put(PropertyIds.NAME, newName);  

ContentStream contentStream = new ContentStreamImpl(newName,
          BigInteger.valueOf(length), contentType, in);
Document newDoc = tempFolder.createDocument(properties, contentStream, VersioningState.MAJOR);  

return newDoc.getId();

• REST:

HttpPost httpPost=new HttpPost(pathId.replace("/objects/","/folders/")
          .replace(".json","/objects.json"));
httpPost.addHeader("Authorization",authorizationString);  

HttpClient client = new DefaultHttpClient();  

String json = "{\"properties\" : {\"object_name\" : \"" + newName +
          "\", \"r_object_type\" :\"dm_document\"}}";  

File temp = File.createTempFile(newName,".tmp");
byte[] data = IOUtils.toByteArray(in);
FileUtils.writeByteArrayToFile(temp, data);  

MultipartEntity reqEntity = new MultipartEntity();
reqEntity.addPart("data", new StringBody (json,
          "application/vnd.emc.documentum",Charset.forName("UTF-8")));
reqEntity.addPart("content", new FileBody(temp, newName, contentType, null));  

httpPost.setEntity(reqEntity);
HttpResponse response = client.execute(httpPost);
temp.delete();  

String result=getResponseAsString(response.getEntity().getContent());
JSONObject obj= new JSONObject(result);
JSONArray jsonArray = (JSONArray) obj.getJSONArray("links");  

return (String)jsonArray.getJSONObject(0).get("href");

Create Folder:

• CMIS:

    Folder tempFolder=(Folder)session.getObjectByPath(path);
    Map<String, Object> properties = new HashMap<String, Object>();
    properties.put(PropertyIds.OBJECT_TYPE_ID, "cmis:folder");
    properties.put(PropertyIds.NAME, newName);  

    Folder newFolder=tempFolder.createFolder(properties);  

    return newFolder.getId();

• REST:

    HttpPost httpPost=new HttpPost(pathId.replace("/objects/","/folders/")
                   .replace(".json","/objects.json"));
    httpPost.addHeader("Authorization",authorizationString);  

    HttpClient client = new DefaultHttpClient();  

    String json = "{\"properties\" : {\"object_name\" : \"" + newName +
              "\", \"r_object_type\" :\"dm_folder\"}}";  

    MultipartEntity reqEntity = new MultipartEntity();
    reqEntity.addPart("data", new StringBody (json,
              "application/vnd.emc.documentum",Charset.forName("UTF-8")));  

    httpPost.setEntity(reqEntity);
    HttpResponse response = client.execute(httpPost);  

    String result=getResponseAsString(response.getEntity().getContent());
    JSONObject obj= new JSONObject(result);
    JSONArray jsonArray = (JSONArray) obj.getJSONArray("links");  

    return (String)jsonArray.getJSONObject(0).get("href");

Version object:

• CMIS:

Document newDoc = (Document) session.getObject(session.createObjectId(objectId));  

ObjectId newVersionId = newDoc.checkOut();
Document newVersion=(Document)session.getObject(newVersionId);
ContentStream cstream = new ContentStreamImpl(newDoc.getContentStream().getFileName(),
               BigInteger.valueOf(length), newDoc.getContentStream().getMimeType(), in);
newVersionId=newVersion.checkIn(true, null, cstream, null);  

return newVersionId.getId();

REST:

HttpGet httpGet=new HttpGet(pathId);
httpGet.addHeader("Authorization",authorizationString);  

HttpClient client = new DefaultHttpClient();  

//get lock-checkout url
HttpResponse response = client.execute(httpGet);  

String result=getResponseAsString(response.getEntity().getContent());
JSONObject obj=new JSONObject(result);
JSONArray jsonArray = (JSONArray) obj.getJSONArray("links");  

String lockUrl=null;
for (int i=0; i<jsonArray.length(); i++){
     if (jsonArray.getJSONObject(i).get("rel").toString().endsWith("checkout")){
         lockUrl=jsonArray.getJSONObject(i).get("href").toString();
     }
}  

//lock-checkout object
HttpPut httpPut=new HttpPut(lockUrl);
httpPut.addHeader("Authorization",authorizationString);  

response = client.execute(httpPut);
result=getResponseAsString(response.getEntity().getContent());
obj=new JSONObject(result);
jsonArray = (JSONArray) obj.getJSONArray("links");  

String objName=obj.getJSONObject("properties").get("object_name").toString();
String checkinUrl=null;  

//get checkin url
for (int i=0; i<jsonArray.length(); i++){
     if (jsonArray.getJSONObject(i).get("rel").toString().endsWith("checkin-next-major")){
         checkinUrl=jsonArray.getJSONObject(i).get("href").toString();
     }
}  

String json = "{\"properties\" : {}}";  

File temp = File.createTempFile(objName,".tmp");
byte[] data = IOUtils.toByteArray(in);
FileUtils.writeByteArrayToFile(temp, data);  

//cheking new version
HttpPost httpPost=new HttpPost(checkinUrl);
httpPost.addHeader("Authorization",authorizationString);  

MultipartEntity reqEntity = new MultipartEntity();
reqEntity.addPart("data", new StringBody (json,
             "application/vnd.emc.documentum",Charset.forName("UTF-8")));
reqEntity.addPart("content", new FileBody( temp , objName, contentType, null));  

httpPost.setEntity(reqEntity);  

response = client.execute(httpPost);
result=getResponseAsString(response.getEntity().getContent());
obj=new JSONObject(result);
jsonArray = (JSONArray) obj.getJSONArray("links");  

return (String)jsonArray.getJSONObject(0).get("href");