LiveCycle Authentication with ColdFusion

Here's a snippet of ColdFusion code that will allow you to athenticate a LiveCycle user using the AuthenticationManagerService service that's shipped with LCES 8.2. You can then use the results to pull the user's oid, userId, full name, etc, from the authenticateResponse.

More importantly, you can use the assertion string to implement SSO with SAML. Once you have the assertion, you can call validateAssertion on the same service to validate the user and get their information. In other words, you can perform the authentication using ColdFusion, and then for example, pass the assertion to your flex app so that you don't force the user to authenticate again.

<cfset username = "administrator">
<cfset password = toBase64('password')>

<cfsavecontent variable="xml">
<SOAP-ENV:Envelope xmlns:SOAP-ENV="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/" xmlns:SOAP-ENC="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/encoding/" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
<SOAP-ENV:Body>
<m:authenticate xmlns:m="http://adobe.com/idp/services">
<m:username><cfoutput>#username#</cfoutput></m:username>
<m:password><cfoutput>#password#</cfoutput></m:password>
</m:authenticate>
</SOAP-ENV:Body>
</SOAP-ENV:Envelope>
</cfsavecontent>

<cfhttp url="http://servername:portnumber/soap/services/AuthenticationManagerService?wsdl" method="post">
<cfhttpparam type="cgi" name="SOAPAction" value="authenticate">
<cfhttpparam type="xml" name="authenticateRequest" value="#xml#">
</cfhttp>

<cfset xml = xmlParse(cfhttp.filecontent)>
<cfset assertion = xmlSearch(xml, "//*[local-name()='assertion']")>
<cfoutput>#htmleditformat(assertion[1].xmltext)#</cfoutput>

Authentication with Flex Remoting in Workspace

If you're getting the following error, it probably means that you have a RemoteObject call within your flex application that's loaded up as a workspace task (process / form / etc). You won't see this error if you're using the same credentials to log into workspace as what you're using for your remoting call, but it'll pop up if you try to log into workspace with another random user.

That being said, you should not authenticate your endpoints in flex and simply ensure that all users who need access to your workspace task have both "Services User" and "LiveCycle Workspace User" roles assigned to them.

fault = (mx.rpc::Fault)#2
errorID = 0
faultCode = "Channel.Authentication.Error"
faultDetail = "Cannot re-authenticate in the same session."
faultString = "warn"
message = "faultCode:Channel.Authentication.Error faultString:'warn' faultDetail:'Cannot re-authenticate in the same session.'"
name = "Error"
rootCause = (mx.messaging.messages::ErrorMessage)#3

Configuring a livecycle workspace process / task for all users

We created a flex application that we in turn wanted to load up within the Adobe Livecycle Workspace ES (8.2). When originally deployed, only the super administrator was able to view it, but no other workspace enabled users. Here are the steps to configure your task properly.

• Log into the Adobe LiveCycle Administration Console
• Click on Services
• Click on Applications and Services
• Click on Service Management
• Find and click on your applicable service
• Click the security tab
• Click on "Add Principal"
• Click on "All Principals", or the user(s) / group(s) in question
• Select the "INVOKE_PERM" permission
• Make sure to save your changes

If the user in question can't login to workspace at all, make sure they have the "LiveCycle Workspace User" role assigned to them.

Flex DocumentReference and LiveCycle 8.2

If you plan to use a DocumentReference to send a file to LiveCycle, such as an xml file, you need to ensure that you're using the latest adobe-remoting-provider.swc found xxx\LiveCycle8.2\LiveCycle_ES_SDK\misc\DataServices\Client-Libraries.

Previous versions of the DocumentReference allow for xml, but with 8.2, you need to send your document within the text property.

Look at "LCDS-325" at http://help.adobe.com/en_US/livecycle/8.2/lcds_releasenotes.html if you want more details or plan to fix this change on the LiveCycle side, but at the end of the day, it's easier to simply update your swc and text property.

Get current user for a workspace enabled flex application

Here is a sample code snippet if you have to pull user information or user credentials from the signed-in workspace user when a flex application is loaded as a process/form in workspace.

import lc.core.ISessionManager;
import lc.domain.SessionMap;
import mx.utils.ObjectUtil;

var session : SessionMap = SessionMap( Application.application.session );
var sessionManager : ISessionManager = ISessionManager( session.getObject( "lc.core.ISessionManager" ) );

trace( ObjectUtil.toString( sessionManager.authenticatedUser ) );

You'll see that authenticated user is mapped to lc.domain.User. You'll need the latest fds.swk and fds_rb.swc for this. Below is an example of what you'll get back.

(lc.domain::User)#0
address = (null)
description = (null)
displayName = "Super Administrator"
domain = (null)
email = ""
emailAliases = (null)
firstName = (null)
groups = (null)
initials = (null)
isOutOfOffice = false
lastName = (null)
locale = (null)
oid = "8D1446F6-A3DD-F4C2-378B-1B46089140AA"
session = (null)
telephone = ""
timezone = (null)
userid = "administrator"

MySQL Configuration with Adobe LiveCycle ES Turnkey

I just did a fresh install of the Adobe LiveCycle ES Update 1 Turnkey (8.2) and ran into an issue when trying to connect to the MySQL instance it installs using the basic MySQL GUI tools. If you receive "either the server service or the configuration file could not be found. startup variables and service section are therefore disabled" when opening the MySQL GUI Administrator tools, then check out the following steps:

• Backup C:\Adobe\LiveCycle8.2\mysql\my.ini
• Launch the MySQL Administrator
• When prompted to sign in, hold the Ctrl key and click the "Skip" button that appears
• Click on Startup Variables, and hit "Choose Option File" at the bottom and select C:\Adobe\LiveCycle8.2\mysql\my.ini
• Then go back to the Server Control and make sure that "Config Filename" is correct under the "Configure Service" tab.

You should then be able to stop and start the services and connect with the correct password. You can normally pull your username password from C:\Adobe\LiveCycle8.2\jboss\server\all\deploy\adobe_ds.xml if you're not sure what it is after going through the generic install.

This however doesn't solve all my issues, as my "default" account doesn't have the same privileges as say the root account would, but then again, the root account doesn't seem to exist...

http://bugs.mysql.com/bug.php?id=24824

Issues with DataGrid Column Visibility

A friend of mine passed along an interesting problem regarding DataGrids. They had the need to hide certain columns and then dynamically load the data. When doing this as expected, such as dataGridName.dataProvider = yourArrayName, the hidden columns would not stay hidden. The workaround to this issue is to track the visibility of each DataGridColumn, set the column to visible, and then override it with the visibility status we stored.

View the example here and download the code here.

Definately not optimal, but it works... ;-)

Form Validation

Paul Rangel from Wheeler Street Design put together a simple form validator that works quite well. The only thing that you have to be aware of is the fact that you need to initialize the validators property after your form fields are added if you're using states.

Animator vs Animation

A friend of mine just passed me the following YouTube video. It's a great example of someone who is extremely talented and creative with Flash. It's worth a watch.

Enjoy!

Internal Build Error

I recently ran into an issue with Flex Builder where I was getting the "An internal build error has occurred. Please check the Error Log." error when trying to debug my project. Absolutely nothing worked including all the normal practices such as cleaning the project, recreating the workspace, manually deleting the bin folder, reinstalling Flex Builder, etc.

After performing all of these tasks I was still getting "Uncaught exception in compiler" in the error log, which by the way is the .log file in the .metadata folder of your workspace. After further analysis, I tied the issue back to a missing semi-colon after a variable declaration in my class such as:

public class SomeClass
{
      public var blah:Object
}

If you ever find yourself in this situation, start rolling back code and begin to do a detailed analysis for syntax errors that normally do not pose any problems.