Pictionbridge updates a UC Berkeley museum's CollectionSpace instance with data sent from the museum's Piction digital asset management system. Updates are pushed by Piction into a database table. Pictionbridge may be run periodically to read updates from that table. It then creates, updates, or deletes records from CollectionSpace as necessary, using CollectionSpace's REST API.

Development

Maven is required.

To build: mvn clean install

This creates compiled artifacts in the target directory, including a distribution package (pictionbridge-[version]-dist.tar.gz).

To run in development: mvn exec:java

This runs Pictionbridge out of the target directory. Environment variables must be set, as described below.

Installation

To install on a server, copy the distribution file (pictionbridge-[version]-dist.tar.gz) to the desired location, and expand it.

Configuration

Environment Variables

The following environment variables must be set to run the program:

• PICTION_BRIDGE_VERSION

  The version of Pictionbridge jar/lib file. For example, 1.2.2, 1.3, 1.4.1

• PICTION_BRIDGE_HOME

  The full path to the Pictionbridge installation directory. This is the directory that was created by expanding the distribution file, and contains the bin, conf, lib, logs, and work subdirectories.

  Note: It is not necessary to set this variable when running in development via mvn exec:java. Maven will automatically set the installation directory to the target directory. If PICTION_BRIDGE_HOME is set, it will have no effect.

• PICTION_BRIDGE_CONF

  The name of a configuration profile to use. This should correspond to a file in $PICTION_BRIDGE_HOME/conf, but should not have the .xml extension.

• PICTION_BRIDGE_DB_HOST

  The hostname of the database server to use to access the table containing updates.

• PICTION_BRIDGE_DB_PORT

  The port of the database server to use to access the table containing updates.

• PICTION_BRIDGE_DB_NAME

  The name of the database in which to find the table containing updates.

• PICTION_BRIDGE_DB_USER

  The name of the database user to use to access the table containing updates. This database user must exist, and have appropriate permissions on the table.

• PICTION_BRIDGE_DB_PW

  The password of the PICTION_BRIDGE_DB_USER user.

• PICTION_BRIDGE_CSPACE_HOST

  The hostname of the CollectionSpace instance.

• PICTION_BRIDGE_CSPACE_USER

  The name of a CollectionSpace user to use to make updates to the CollectionSpace instance. This CollectionSpace user must exist, and have appropriate permissions on Media and Collection Object records.

• PICTION_BRIDGE_CSPACE_PW

  The password of the PICTION_BRIDGE_CSPACE_USER user.

If none of the required variables are set in the environment, pictionbridge will attempt to source them from a file named .pictionbridge in the running user's home directory.

Configuration Profiles

For the configuration profile named by $PICTION_BRIDGE_CONF, the profile's settings may be changed by editing $PICTION_BRIDGE_HOME/conf/$PICTION_BRIDGE_CONF.xml. See the existing configuration files for all of the available configuration options. Some highlights:

• databaseUpdateMonitor/limit: The maximum number of updates to retrieve per invocation.

• databaseUpdateMonitor/dataSource/url: The location of the database to monitor for updates from Piction.

• cspaceRestUploader/servicesUrlTemplate: The location of the CollectionSpace services layer REST API.

• cspaceRestUploader/pauseBetweenUpdatesMillis: A number of milliseconds to pause between each update to CollectionSpace. This may be used for throttling.

Logging

Logging may be configured by editing $PICTION_BRIDGE_HOME/conf/log4j2.xml.

Running

Once installed from the distribution package, the program may be executed by running the script $PICTION_BRIDGE_HOME\bin\pictionbridge. This script ensures that the required environment variables are set. If none are set, it attempts to source them from a file named .pictionbridge in the running user's home directory.

To run during development, see above.