Tom's Blog

Supplied free of charge with no support, no certification, no maintenance,
no warranty and no indemnity by Alfresco or its Certified Partners. Click
here for support. Alfresco Software Inc. © 2005-2009 All rights reserved.

1. Create an empty directory for the source code
   

       % mkdir alfresco-labs
       % cd alfresco-labs
   

2. Use Subversion to download the Alfresco Labs source code
   

       % svn co svn://svn.alfresco.com/alfresco/HEAD
   

   or use the http protocol if you have internal firewall issues:

       % svn co http://svn.alfresco.com/repos/alfresco-open-mirror/alfresco/HEAD
   

   The svn command will connect to the Alfresco Subversion repository and copy each of the files in the HEAD branch into your local directory. Total download size will be about 734MB. Depending on the speed of your connection, this might be a good time to get coffee, have lunch, check your email. If the Subversion URL doesn't work, check this page to see if Alfresco has changed the repository location.
   
   
3. Edit PageTag.java to change/remove the page footer text
   The PageTag.java file you want to edit is in the directory HEAD/root/projects/web-client/source/java/org/alfresco/web/ui/repo/tag. The commands below will edit the file in Notepad for Windows or vi for Unix/Mac users. But you also can just navigate to the folder and edit the file with any editor.
   
   For Windows:

       % notepad HEAD\root\projects\web-client\source\java\org\alfresco\web\ui\repo\tag\PageTag.java
   

   For Unix variants:

       $ vi HEAD/root/projects/web-client/source/java/org/alfresco/web/ui/repo/tag/PageTag.java
   

   At this point, you can decide what you want your new page footer text to say. The quickest edit is to completely remove all footer contents by changing line 115:

       private static String alfresco = null;
   

   to:

       private static String alfresco = "";
   

   Why this works is that static alfresco variable holds the contents of the page footer HTML (images and text), which is output by the overridden JSP tag library method doEndTag. If the alfresco variable is null, which it is the first time the code is run, the doEndTag method calls a private helper method, getAlfrescoButton, to populate it.
   
   If you want to change the footer text to something of your own choosing, or perhaps you want to retain the Alfresco copyright notice because you won't be changing the web client's look and feel, you will want either to set the alfresco variable to the text of your choosing, or edit the getAlfrescoButton method and/or some of the variables it uses to build up the footer text.
   
   For example, if you want to retain the copyright statement but remove the warning text, edit the ALF_COPY constant on lines 103-112 to remove the text you don't want:

      private final static String ALF_COPY  = "Supplied free of charge with " +
           "<a class='footer' href='http://www.alfresco.com/services/support/communityterms/#support'>no support</a>, " +
           "<a class='footer' href='http://www.alfresco.com/services/support/communityterms/#certification'>no certification</a>, " +
           "<a class='footer' href='http://www.alfresco.com/services/support/communityterms/#maintenance'>no maintenance</a>, " +
           "<a class='footer' href='http://www.alfresco.com/services/support/communityterms/#warranty'>no warranty</a> and " +
           "<a class='footer' href='http://www.alfresco.com/services/support/communityterms/#indemnity'>no indemnity</a> by " +
           "<a class='footer' href='http://www.alfresco.com'>Alfresco</a> or its " +
           "<a class='footer' href='http://www.alfresco.com/partners/'>Certified Partners</a>. " +
           "<a class='footer' href='http://www.alfresco.com/services/support/'>Click here for support</a>. " +
           "Alfresco Software Inc. © 2005-2009 All rights reserved.";
   

   If you want to keep some of the text but remove the web beacon image or SourceForge graphic, you will need to edit the getAlfrescoButton method or set the alfresco variable as discussed previously.
   
   Fortunately, the getAlfrescoButton method does not add structural HTML text to the footer, so setting the alfresco variable directly with your chosen text is a viable option. If you use HTTPS on your website and you want to use an image in your footer, have a look at the technique used in the getAlfrescoButton method to change the image URL based on the request scheme. It's a handy way to avoid having web browsers complain about an encrypted page using non-encrypted components.
   
   With the code edited, you are ready to rebuild Alfresco.
4. Rebuild the web client application
   Here is where you need Ant. Use the build target to rebuild the project modules. The default target will attempt to deploy the rebuilt WAR file, so make sure to use the "build" target.
   
   For Windows:

       % ant -f HEAD\root\build.xml build
   

   For Unix:

       $ ant -f HEAD/root/build.xml build
   

   You will see several warnings about the use of deprecated methods and the like. But the code should build correctly.
   
   The Ant task should rebuild the Alfresco JAR files and the WAR file. The rebuilt alfresco-web-client.jar file is the one that contains the repository JSP tag you want to replace. The Ant task creates this JAR file in the directory HEAD/root/projects/web-client/build/dist.
5. Copy the alfresco-web-client.jar to your Alfresco webapp
   Copy the JAR file to your exploded WAR file directory location under the WEB-INF/lib directory. If you deploy Alfresco as WAR file rather than exploded WAR, you can use the full alfresco.war file that you also will find in the HEAD/root/projects/web-client/build/dist. directory.