OIM 11g R2 Catalog Customization Example

This post shows how OIM catalog can be customized by using OIM UI capabilities such as managed beans and EL expressions. The post first describes the use case and the solution to address the use case; then it describes the solution details as well as provides links to the artifacts.

In order to have a better understanding of the customization described in this post, one should read the posts about the catalog and about the OIM UI customization.

Use case description

When an end user searches the catalog, he/she can see any catalog item that he/she is allowed to request, including the items already provisioned. In other words, the ‘Add to Cart’ button will always show up for any catalog item. In the shopping cart detail page, the ‘Submit’ action will prevent users from submitting request with catalog items that are already provisioned to them.

With the customization described in this post, the catalog items already provisioned will show up with the ‘Add To Cart’ button replaced and users will not be able to add such items to the shopping cart.

Solution Description

The solution consists of a custom code that will be invoked every time a catalog item is rendered as part of a catalog search result. The code will be deployed as a managed bean in the OIM customization placeholder library (oracle.iam.ui.custom library).

The custom code will check if the catalog item (role, application instance, or entitlement) is already provisioned to the request beneficiary. If the check is 'true', the 'Add to Cart' button will be disabled and a different icon will be shown in the UI. 

The solution also replaces the out-of-the-box 'Add to cart' image by a custom image.

Solution Details

The solution consists of the following steps:

1. Create a custom application in JDeveloper, code the solution and deploy it to a jar file
2. Deploy the jar file created in the previous step to the OIM customization placeholder library
3. Invoking the custom code from OIM UI
4. Deploy the custom images to WebLogic 

1. Creating the JDeveloper Application:

JDeveloper application will contain all the custom code and the ADF artificts. It will also contain the deployment profile that generates a Jar file.

The general steps are:

1. Create a new library in JDeveloper with OIM client jar files
2. Create a new application and select 'Fusion Web Application' as application type. This option will take you through a wizard where you have to provide some basic information. The picture below shows the JDeveloper option you should select
   
3.  The new application will have two projects: 'Model' and 'ViewController'. All your work will be done in the 'ViewController' project.
4. Add library created in step 1 is added to the 'ViewController' project
5. Create a new deployment profile in the 'ViewController' project. The deployment profile type is 'ADF Library Jar File':
   
6. Add a bean declaration to the adf-config.xml file. The bean declaration will tell OIM UI which beans are available and can be invoked. The picture below shows the bean used in this example
   
7. Code and compile your bean.
8. Deploy your bean to a jar file using the profile created in step 2.

The project developed for this post is available here.

2. Deploying the custom jar into the OIM placeholder library

The placeholder library is the file oracle.iam.ui.custom-dev-starter-pack.war. This file is available along with the other OIM application packages (EARs and WARs) at $OIM_ORACLE_HOME/server/apps folder.

Before doing any modification to this file, create a backup of it.

Using a ZIP tool, like 7-Zip, the steps are:

1. Open the oracle.iam.ui.custom-dev-starter-pack.war
2. Add the custom jar file to the 'WEB-INF/lib' folder. If the 'lib' folder does not exist, create it
3. Save the oracle.iam.ui.custom-dev-starter-pack.war file. The picture below shows the war file in the 7-ZIP tool:
   
4. Copy the oracle.iam.ui.custom-dev-starter-pack.war file back to its original location under $OIM_ORACLE_HOME/server/apps
5. Stop OIM managed server
6. In WebLogic administration console, update the 'oracle.iam.ui.custom' library deployment and activate the changes
7. Start OIM managed server

3. Invoking the custom managed bean from OIM UI

The first step here is to login to OIM as an administrator and create a new 'SandBox'. The picture below shows the sandbox created for this solution. After creating the sandbox, make sure it is active.

Navigate to the catalog and execute a search (be sure to execute a search that will return results so the 'Add to cart' button shows up). With the results on the page, click on the 'Customize' link on the top right. Then on the top left, hit the 'View' drop-down link, and click on 'Source'. Then move the mouse cursor to the catalog panel, and click over the 'Catalog Items' panel title. Confirm the task flow edit. This action should highlight the 'Column: Catalog Items' element in the source panel. Then scroll the source panel down until you see the element 'commandToolbarButton: Add to Cart'. This is the UI element to be customized. The picture below shows what you should see after all the navigation clicks:

Right click on the 'Add to Cart' button, and then click on 'Edit' link. You should see button the 'Component Properties'. There are three changes to be done: the 'Icon' property, the 'Text' property and the 'Disabled' property. To change the properties values you will use the 'Expression Builder' by clicking on the small arrow on the right of each property, the picture below shows that:

In the 'Icon' property, enter the following expression:

#{catalogResolverBean.resolve[row.entityKey]}

In the 'Disabled' property, enter the following expression:

#{catalogResolverBean.resolve[row.entityKey] != '/images/add_tocart.png'}

In the 'Text' property, delete the current expression and leave it blank.

The picture below shows all the three properties after the change:

Once everything is set, click on 'Ok' button, then on the top-right 'Close' link. The customization is saved in the Sandbox.

4. Deploying the custom images to WebLogic:

The code that checks whether or not a catalog is already provisioning returns an image path. This image will be loaded as any other UI image. Therefore the images files must be available to WebLogic/OIM application.

The images used in this example are available here.

You have to copy the images to the following location:

$DOMAIN_HOME/servers/<oim_server>/tmp/_WL_user/oracle.iam.ui.view/<xxxx>/images

<oim_server>  is the name of the managed server where OIM is running. If you have a cluster you need to copy to all managed servers in the cluster

<xxxx> is a random string. In my environment this string is 'ycwdzs'

A restart is needed after deploying the images.

Results

The modification will make the catalog search result show different icons according to the verification result from the managed bean. The picture below shows an example:

 Disclaimers

• The content and codes are provided "as is" and without warranties as to performance or merchantability and are just examples and for informational purpose
• This post does not go deep in details discussing all the technologies involved in the customization, it is more of a ‘how-to’ example.
• Keep in mind that customizations can always bring performance impact, specially in environments with lots of data. This post does NOT cover any tuning, performance impact or anything like and it was not conceived with performance as an objective
• There may be cases where the solution described in this post does not fit business requirements, hence the implementation approach should be different