Tridion CMIS connector for aDAM - External content Library

We had a requirement to connect aDam with Tridion 2013. I started the POC after reading docs, posts       ( from Eric & Bart).

External Content Library aka ECL was introduced in Tridion 2013 to connect external content/multimedia sources with Tridion Interface e.g youtube, vimeo, flicker, facebook, aDam, Media Manager. Its a great feature.
When content starts displaying in the CME, it looks like native components.

Prerequisite: 

Tridion: 

• Assembly: Tridion.ExternalContentLibrary.V2
• Admin Privilege

Terminologies:

Mount Point: Tridion folder which you mount to access external content. all external content is listed under this folder. 

ECL Stub Schema: When a provider is mounted in Tridion, it generates a Stub schema , and all stub components (from external sources) displayed in this mountPoint are type of this stub schema.(because you need a schema to represent a component in Tridion)

Interface: Interfaces in following figure are used in development.

aDam

• aDam Studio installed
• Rest Service to access its content - in aDam 5.0 there was no open API/oData etc were available. In current 5.0 version there is no official API comes with aDam installer. but aDam guys provided this Sample Rest Service which can be extended, as i discussed with them, API will be released in next versions.

Few Terminologies

• Classification: its basically taxonomy of aDam, and content in CME would also categorized by classification. 
• Record: Assets are called Record in aDam. 

Development.  
Lets move to development side, i will keep code short as possible with a view to brevity and clarity.

Here i am declaring that my connector will show two types of item in the interface, first one is a folder, which is collection of items, in aDam case its Classification. Rest methods are standard implementations.

AdamEclProvider : IContentLibrary 
it initialize the AddIn, this is the class which is configured in ExternalContentLibrary.xml.

[AddIn(
    "AdamProvider",
    Description = "Adam External Content Library Provider",
    Publisher = "Raj Future Technologies",
    Version = "1.0.0.0")]
    public class AdamEclProvider : IContentLibrary

    {
public IList<IDisplayType> DisplayTypes
        {
            get
            {
                return new[]
                    {
                        HostServices.CreateDisplayType( "clf", "Classification", EclItemTypes.Folder),
                        HostServices.CreateDisplayType( "ast", "Assets", EclItemTypes.File),
                    };
            }

        }

     }//Class end


AdamContext : IContentLibraryContext:

This call has code for connecting to external sources and retrieval of the content. 

internal class AdamContext : IContentLibraryContext

    {

/*this method is triggered when user click on MountPoint, its fetches the classifications from the Adam and show there
now when that particular folder is clicked, sub classicifations and assest are displayed. */

public IFolderContent GetFolderContent(IEclUri parentFolderUri, int pageIndex, EclItemTypes itemTypes)
        {
                       
            List<IContentLibraryListItem> result = new List<IContentLibraryListItem>();
            if (parentFolderUri.ItemType == EclItemTypes.MountPoint && itemTypes.HasFlag(EclItemTypes.Folder))
            {
//AdamHelper is kind of facade to get the information from service
                            var classifications = AdamHelper.GetClassifications();
                foreach (var classification in classifications)
                {
                    result.Add(new AdamListClassification(parentFolderUri.PublicationId, classification.id.ToString(), classification.Name));                
                
                }
                
           canSearch = true;
            }
            else if (parentFolderUri.ItemType == EclItemTypes.Folder && parentFolderUri.SubType == "clf" && itemTypes.HasFlag(EclItemTypes.File))
            {
               // throw new Exception("iam here");
                var records = AdamHelper.GetRecords(parentFolderUri.ItemId);
                
                result.AddRange()//
            }
                return AdamEclProvider.HostServices.CreateFolderContent(parentFolderUri, result, false, canSearch);


        }

//fetch particular item. 

public IContentLibraryItem GetItem(IEclUri eclUri)

        {

                       if (eclUri.ItemType == EclItemTypes.File && eclUri.SubType == "ast")

            {

                var record = AdamHelper.GetRecord(eclUri.ItemId);

                return new AdamAsset(eclUri.PublicationId, record, eclUri.ItemId);

            }

            throw new NotSupportedException();

        }

//fetch item list

 public IList<IContentLibraryItem> GetItems(IList<IEclUri> eclUris)

        {

///code goes here to call the aDam helper

}

} //Class end

//This class represent one type of asset, so if you have image, video you have to implement it for  each of the asset.

public class AdamAsset : IContentLibraryMultimediaItem
    {
public AdamAsset(int publicationId, RecordData record, string parentId)
        {
            _parentId = parentId;
            _record = record;
            _id = AdamEclProvider.HostServices.CreateEclUri(publicationId, AdamEclProvider.MountPointId, record.id.ToString(), "ast", EclItemTypes.File);

        }

public string DisplayTypeId
        {
            get { return "ast"; }

        }

}

}//Class end

//Represent a classification

public class AdamClassification : IContentLibraryListItem, IContentLibraryItem 

    {

    }

Note: You have to set WebReady property to "Yes" from Files tab to view the asset in Tridion.

with above code you will able to display the asset in CMS and will able to include it in the native Tridion components, for publishing those there would be additional template code. which i did not do as scope of my POC and different direction of the project.

Official Adam Connector: Official aDam connector is also available from SDL which is licensed Separately. You can check with SDL for it.

Let me know if you have any questions or need any help, feel free to comment below.