Thomas Hampel

 8 February 2021
Good news for developers and partners out there who work on plugins and extensions for Domino.
We just published a new version of the C API Toolkit, actually the first new version since more than 7 years.

This is the first HCL shipment of the C API and it signals an ongoing commitment to revamp the C API delopment story,
it now supports building applications using the GUI environment for Visual Studio 2017.

However, as Ulrich Krause already highlighted in his blog it does contain just a very few new API calls yet, also make files were removed because they did not work anymore.
HCL's development team is working on a V12 version of the C API Toolkit that will be providing make files and MSVS project files again. This version 12 will be provided after Domino V12 has shipped.

You can find the current/updated C API Toolkit in the Domino server product category on Flexnet Downloads




Reference:

• Flexnet Downloads
• Ulrlich Krause - CAPI SDK 11.0.1 for HCL Notes / Domino released

Thomas Hampel

 19 September 2017
According to RFC 2298 http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2298.txt it is recommended to show a dialog box where the recipient of a mail can decide weather or not a return receipt shall be sent back to the originator of the mail. This behavior is not currently part of the Standard IBM Mail template.

To add this feature you have to modify the following design elements:

• Form “Memo”, Event "QueryOpenDocument", added the code shown below
• Form “Reply”, Event "QueryOpenDocument", added the code shown below
• Form “ReplyWithHistory”, Event "QueryOpenDocument", added the code shown below

Insert this code at the end of the QueryOpenDocument event.

Set doc = Source.document
If Source.isNewDoc Then
        '# don' t do anything, as this is a new document
Else
        If doc.GetItemValue("ReturnReceipt")(0) = "1"  And doc.HasItem ("DeliveredDate") Then
                If MessageBox ("The sender of this message has asked to be notified when you read this message." & Chr(13) & "Do you wish to notify the sender?", 36, "Send Return Receipt?") = 7 Then
                        Call doc.ReplaceItemValue ("ReturnReceipt", "0")
                        Call doc.Save(True, False, true)
                End if
        End If
End If

Reference:
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/lotus/library/ls-BlockRetRec/index.html

Thomas Hampel

 21 September 2016
I am using Git for version control of software projects I am working on.
Recently I wanted to push the changes I've made to a Domino template my git client responded with the following error:

error: RPC failed; curl 56 SSLRead() return error -9806
fatal: The remote end hung up unexpectedly

To cut a long story short : this problem was caused by using HTTP(S) for pusing changes to the git server. After changing to SSH, everything worked fine again.

Thomas Hampel

 21 March 2016
Quickly creating a mail with Buttons containing LotusScript can cause headaches.
It just takes a few lines of code for running into undocumented error messages here is a small example:

will result in:


Changing "if not ..." to "is ..." like shown here

will result in a slightly different error message "Type mismatch in method IfCoerceBool: Unknown found, Uknown expected"

Do you spot the problem???

What is the root cause?
The property "IsNewDoc" acutally is a property of NotesUIDocument but is not a valid property of the NotesDocument class.
For testing if a NotesDocument is a new document, use the property IsNewNote
When creating a new button within the body of a new mail, Option Declare is not enabled by default like it is in the Designer client, so the error was not detected when saving the source code.
with Option Declare enabled its easier to spot the problem...


Reminder:

• Option Declare is your friend

Thomas Hampel

 23 July 2015
The Mindoo FTP Server project provides an FTP server wrapped into an XPages application. It is based on the Apache FtpServer which runs as OSGi plugin on the server side.
One day a customer reported the FTP server would no longer work. A quick check showed that port 21 does not respond any longer.

Restarting the HTTP task showed a JVM Exception


Checking the OSGI bundles showed the required bundle is not even installed.
> tell http osgi diag com.mindoo.ftp


Analysis
Check the file [DominoData]\domino\workspace\logs\error-log-0.xml for any problems
the very first warning in this file showed that a plugin was not loaded because the signer does not have the required access rights

and further down in the same file:


At the first access rights seemed to be ok, but when looking a little closer I have found the user name does not have access to the server any longer because the Organization was renamed from "OrgEU" to "Org"

Solution (Part1)
The signature which is being used here is not a signature of a design element, it is the content of the Eclipse Update site which still had the old signature referenced. So how are we going to fix this?

• Open the Eclipse UpdateSite and use "Actions\Sign All Content"
  Remark: This will not sign any design elements - it will sign the documents in the application only.
  
• Restart the HTTP task
  
  restart task http
• Watching the server console
  

Running into another problem
Although the FTP Server was running again, it seems like there still was an issue with the XPages application.
Quickly looking into  [DominoData]\domino\workspace\logs\error-log-0.xml showed a well known problem.


Solution (Part2)
Obviously someone did open the Application in Domino Designer without disabling the option to recompile xPages automatically.
So make sure this option is set to "Manually recompile Xpages"


and then open the Mindoo FTP Domino application in Domino Designer and hit "Project\Build Project" in your Designer client.


Testing results

• Opening the Mindoo FTP Application from a browser seems to work
  
• "tell http osgi mftp status" shows that our server is now running on port 21
  
• Opening an FTP connection from a remote client is working fine

Thomas Hampel

 10 October 2012
Trying to set up a new machine with Domino Designer 8.5.3 and Source Control (SVN) based on this Blog post from Niklas Heidloff unfortunately was not working as expected.
It seems like the Eclipse Update site for GEF which was refernced in his blog post was not available any longer.

> CWPPR0031: The requested provisioning operation(s) completed with partial success.
> Error parsing site stream. [The XML stream is not a valid default "site.xml" file. The root tag is not site.]



A quick search brought me to the an update site hosting the older versions recommended, adding it to the Application Locations fixed this small problem.


Although this is one way to make it work, the most simple way is to make use of a ready-built Update Site from OpenNTF, see this project
Basically you need to download & unzip this file to your loal disk, and point the application installer to this update site.

Happy coding!

Thomas Hampel

 2 October 2012
A customer wanted to have all attachments of some selected Notes document exported to the file system and also wanted to keep an option for developers to access the metadata of the original Notes document.
Nothing easier than that, so I wrote this small script to get the job done.

First the entire document is exported into DXL, then all attachments are detached to the file system. Both parts are not rocket science, but some people might want to reuse the code.
To avoid name conflicts while detaching files a folder is created for each Notes document so all attachments of this Notes document will be stored in this subfolder.

Option Public
Option Declare
Dim gCounter&
Sub Initialize
      Dim s As New NotesSession
      Dim coll As NotesDocumentCollection
      Dim BasePath$

      BasePath$ = InputBox ("Export data to path...: ", "Export", "C:\")
     
      '# add backslash at the end
      If right (BasePath$,1) <> "\" Then BasePath$ = BasePath$ & "\"
     
      Print "Using BasePath : " & BasePath$
     
      Set coll = s.currentdatabase.Unprocesseddocuments
      If coll Is Nothing Then
              MessageBox "No documents selected"
      Else
              Print "Processing " & coll.count & " documents..."
              Call ExportToDXL (coll, BasePath$)
              Call ExportToFile (coll, BasePath$)
              MessageBox "Export completed."
      End If        
End Sub

Function ExportToDXL (Coll As NotesDocumentCollection, BasePath As String)
      Dim session As New NotesSession
      Dim stream As NotesStream
      Dim DXLfilename$
      Dim doc As NotesDocument
      Dim tdoc As NotesDocument
      Dim exporter As NotesDXLExporter
     
      If coll Is Nothing Then Exit function
      Set doc = coll.getfirstdocument
      While Not doc Is Nothing
              Set tdoc = coll.getNextDocument (doc)
              '# Open xml file named after current database
              Set stream = session.CreateStream
              DXLfilename$ = BasePath$ & doc.universalid & ".dxl"
              If Not stream.Open(DXLfilename$) Then
                      MessageBox "Cannot open " & DXLfilename$,, "Error"
                      Exit Function
              End If
             
              '# kick off the exporter process
              Set exporter = session.CreateDXLExporter
              Call exporter.SetInput(doc)
              Call exporter.SetOutput(stream)
              Call exporter.Process
             
              Set doc = tdoc
      Wend
End Function

Function ExportToFile (coll As NotesDocumentCollection, BasePath As String)
        On Error GoTo ErrH
        Dim doc As NotesDocument
        Dim tdoc As NotesDocument
        Dim rtitem As variant
        Dim targetpath$, fname$
        Dim FieldList(0) As String
        Dim oba As Variant
       
        '# define which fields to scan for attachments
        FieldList (0) = "Body"
       
        If coll Is Nothing Then Exit Function
       
        Set doc = coll.getfirstdocument
        While Not doc Is Nothing
                Set tdoc = coll.getNextDocument (doc)
                If doc.Hasembedded Then
                        targetpath$ = BasePath$ & doc.universalid & "\"
                       
                        If Dir$ (BasePath$ & doc.universalid, 16) = "" Then MkDir targetpath$
                       
                        '# loop list of fields
                        ForAll f In FieldList
                                 Set rtitem = doc.GetFirstItem(f)
                                 If Not rtitem Is Nothing Then
                                        If (rtitem.Type = RICHTEXT ) Then
                                                '# make sure the field contains some objects and detach
                                                If IsArray(rtitem.embeddedObjects) Then
                                                        ForAll o In rtitem.EmbeddedObjects
                                                                If ( o.Type = EMBED_ATTACHMENT ) Then
                                                                        Fname$=o.Name
                                                                        If FileExists (fname$) Then fname$ = CStr(gCounter&) & Fname$
                                                                        Call o.ExtractFile(targetPath$ & Fname$)
                                                                        gCounter& = gCounter& + 1
                                                                End If
                                                        End ForAll
                                                End If

                                        End If
                                End If
                        End ForAll
                End If
                Set doc = tdoc
        Wend
continue:
        Exit Function
       
errH:
        Stop
        Print "Error " & Err() & " in line " & Erl() & " - " & Error
        Resume continue
End Function

Thomas Hampel

 30 July 2012
What if a developer is using user specific profile documents to store some settings in a Domino application.
In this example users have Author access with the ability to create new documents and the ability to write public documents, no roles and no reader or author name fields are used in any document.


I'm wondering why users are not able to modify their own profile document by using the simple formula @Command([EditProfile]; "profile"; @Username)
Of course developers will refer to the Designer Help or this technote where IBM clearly states:

In order to edit profile documents, including your own profile, using @Command([EditProfile]), you must have at least Editor access or Author access in the ACL plus inclusion in an Author field.

so it sounds like the user name must be listed in an author name field in order to modify an existing userprofile.

Unfortunately in reality it seems to be working slightly different... see this example:
I've created a new form to be used as a profile document, the form contained only a single field

Additionally I've created a small agent with the following code:

Sub Initialize
       Dim s As New NotesSession
       Dim doc As NotesDocument
       Dim ws As New NotesUIWorkspace
       
       Set doc = s.currentdatabase.Getprofiledocument("profile", s.Effectiveusername)
       
       '# allows to modify the field values in the backend
       Call doc.Replaceitemvalue("Test", "test")
       Call doc.Save(true, false)
       
       '# allows to modify field values using the frontend
       Call ws.Dialogbox("profile", true, true, false, false, false, false, "Test", doc, false, false, false)
       Call doc.Save(True, False)
       
       '# does NOT allow to modify the document
       Call ws.Editprofile("profile", s.Effectiveusername)
End Sub

It seems like its possible to modify userprofile documents (which dont have an author name field) even when you dont have author access to the document itself.
To clarify: the application was put on a server and access rights were limited to Author.


I'm wondering if there's any good explanation for this behavior.
Update : The problem has been filed as SPR (Software Problem Report) # RGAU8WZE2X and the Customer Report, APAR # LO71028 was created.

Thomas Hampel

 12 June 2012
For some reason it wasnt possible to use embedded images within blog postings, looking at the HTML source of the resulting web page showed that some piece of HTML code was inserted when saving the document.

After some debugging, I figured out that it was caused by the scriptlibrary "DXNotesContentProcessing" where the function "autoCreateLinks" is the one to be looked at.

Function autoCreateLinks(strIn As String) As String
   If configdoc.config_createlinks(0)="Create Links" Then
           'Search for text and replace with link
           autoCreateLinks=strIn
           Dim view As notesview
           Dim docLink As NotesDocument
           Set view=db.getview("vLinksDesc")
           Set docLink=view.GetFirstDocument
           Do Until docLink Is Nothing
                   If Instr(autoCreateLinks," "+docLink.linktext(0)+" ")>0 Then
                           autoCreateLinks=R5replaceSubstring(autoCreateLinks," "+docLink.linktext(0)+" ",{ <a href="}+docLink.link(0)+{" title="}+docLink.linktext(0)+{">}+docLink.linktext(0)+{</a> })
                   End If
                   Set docLink=view.GetNextDocument(docLink)
           Loop
   Else
           autoCreateLinks=strIn
   End If
End Function

This function is used to replace a piece of text with the URL configured for it. Its using the links from "Configuration\Links" to search for any entry where the field "Link Text" is matching the HTML string.
Bad luck if one created links like this one, where no link text is specified:



which causes the function above to search for the occurance of 2 spaces "  ", which unfortunately is true for embedded images... actually they are located directly behind the tag.


Workaround

• Turn off "Auto Create Links from Link List" located in the configuration document of the blog under "Site Settings\Content Creation"
• Make sure that all links in "Configuration\Links" are created with a propper link text

What about a permanent fix?
Modify the form "Link" and add an input validation formula to the field "linktext" as shown below.

Thomas Hampel

 3 December 2011
How can PDF documents be rendered from within a Notes application?
Converting Notes documents into Adobe's PDF format can be a challanging task.
Many different software addon products for Lotus Notes/Domino are being sold to make this happen,
e.g. DominoPDF which is being used by some of my customers - but in fact you dont need anything else than a Java component inside of your application.

Simply by using the iText Library and a small piece of source code, you can add PDF conversion functions to your Domino application. Look at this video to see an example. The solution outlined here makes sense for embedding this functionality inside an application. For single computers instead, its most likely enough to look at FreePDF (english) a freeware PDF converter which installs itself as a printer device.

Thomas Hampel

 17 November 2011
Recently I came across a situation where multiple workstations had a corrupted local ECL. The document itself was corrupted that it was not possible to edit nor refresh it automatically. The only chance was to rebuild the ECL completely by creating a new NAB, which of course is not what users want to do. With some little reverse engineering and the help of some friends, I've figured out how to use an (undocumented) Notes API call to delete the workstation ECL directly.
For those who want to do something similar, here is the sourcecode:

%REM
      Agent DeleteECL
%END REM
Option Public
Option Declare

Const ERR_MASK = &H3fff
Const PKG_MASK = &H3f00
Const ERRNUM_MASK = &H00ff

Declare Function NSFDbOpen Lib "nnotes.dll" (ByVal PathName As String, rethDB As Long) As Integer
Declare Function NSFDbClose Lib "nnotes.dll" (ByVal hDB As Long) As Integer
Declare Function NSFDbDeleteECL Lib "nnotes.dll" (ByVal hDB As Long, ByVal UserName As String, ByVal UserNameLen As Integer, ByVal ECLType As Integer) As Integer
Declare Function OSLoadString Lib "nnotes.dll" (ByVal hModule As Long, ByVal stringCode As Integer, _
ByVal retBuffer As String, ByVal bufferLength As Integer) As Integer

Sub DeleteECL(Source As Button)
      Dim rc%, build&, filename$
      Dim hDB&
      Dim s As New NotesSession
     
      build& =  s.NotesBuildVersion        
      If build& <= 190 Then filename$ = "desktop5.dsk" Else filename$ = "names.nsf"
     
      Print "Using desktop file : " & filename$
     
      rc% = NSFDbOpen (filename$, hDB&)
      If rc% <> 0 Then
              Print "Unable to open " & filename$
              End
      End If
     
      rc% = NSFDbDeleteECL  (hdb&, s.UserName, Len (s.UserName), 1)
      If rc% = 0 Then
              Print "Successfully deleted local Workstation-ECL in file " & filename$ & " for user " & s.UserName
      Else
              Print "Not successful, returncode = " & rc%
              Print GetAPIError  (rc%)
      End If
     
      rc% = NSFDbDeleteECL  (hdb&, s.UserName, Len (s.UserName), 2)
      If rc% = 0 Then
              Print "Successfully deleted local Applet-ECL in file " & filename$ & " for user " & s.UserName
      Else
              Print "Not successful, returncode = " & rc%
              Print GetAPIError  (rc%)
      End If
     
      rc% = NSFDbDeleteECL  (hdb&, s.UserName, Len (s.UserName), 3)
      If rc% = 0 Then
              Print "Successfully deleted local JavaScript-ECL in file " & filename$ & " for user " & s.UserName
      Else
              Print "Not successful, returncode = " & rc%
              Print GetAPIError  (rc%)
      End If
      rc% = NSFDbClose (hDB&)
     
End Sub
Function GetAPIError (errorCode As Integer) As String
      '** this function translates Notes API error codes into their
      '** corresponding error strings
      Dim errorString As String*256
      Dim returnErrorString As String
      Dim resultStringLength As Long
      Dim errorCodeTranslated As Integer
     
      '** mask off the top 2 bits of the errorCode that was returned; this is
      '** what the ERR macro in the API does
      errorCodeTranslated = (errorCode And ERR_MASK)
     
      '** get the error code translation using the OSLoadString API function
      resultStringLength = OSLoadString(0, errorCodeTranslated, errorString, Len(errorString) - 1)
     
      '** strip off the null-termination on the string before you return it
      If (InStr(errorString, Chr(0)) > 0) Then
              returnErrorString = Left$(errorString, InStr(errorString, Chr(0)) - 1)
      Else
              returnErrorString = errorString
      End If
     
      GetAPIError = returnErrorString
     
End Function

Thomas Hampel

 1 September 2011
Is it possible to set / remove the DAOS - flag in the advanced DB properties via Script??

Up to now I thought its possible to do it in the same way as for all the other DB flags as shown in this technote.
https://www-304.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?rs=899&uid=swg21244071

But it looks like the DAOS flag isnt stored in there....

Well in fact they are stored in there... but they are only exposed with ODS51 and the flag is not written to the $Flags field but written to a $DAOS field.

$DAOS=1 means enabled
$DAOS=0 means disabled

One could set the flag by using the small script supplied in the technote above and referring to the $DAOS field instead, but wait there's a better option:

Just use an (undocumented) LotusScript method "GetOption" and "SetOption" of the NotesDatabase class.

Call NotesDatabase.SetOption(81,true) will enable DAOS

Option Public
Option Declare

Sub Initialize
       '# Server name in canonical format, use "" for client:
       Const Servername$ = ">>>your server name here<<<"
       Dim db As NotesDatabase
       Dim dbdir As New NotesDbDirectory(servername)
       Set db = dbdir.GetFirstDatabase(DATABASE)
       While Not db Is Nothing
               '# Skip databases which you don't have access to
               On Error 4060 GoTo Error4060
               Call db.Open(servername, db.FilePath)
               Call db.setoption(DBOPT_LZCOMPRESSION, True)
               Call db.setoption(81, True)        '# DAOS Enable
GetNextDb:
               Set db = dbdir.GetNextDatabase()
       Wend
       Exit Sub
Error4060:
       '# If the code reaches here then the agent does not have access rights to the db.
       Print db.FilePath & " incorrect rights to access!"
       Resume GetNextDb
End Sub

Thomas Hampel

 13 October 2010
A customer asked me if the icons which are displayed in views have been changed between Domino 7.0 and 8.5.

In fact they did, see the difference yourself - when displaying icons in a view, Domino R6.5 and 7.0 are displaying those icons


starting with Domino 8.5. the icons have changed - in general they now display less colorful.

Thomas Hampel

 24 September 2010
If you want to display the file name in a view, but you only have a field containing file and pathname, here is a small formula to get the file name only.

List:=@Explode(FilePath;"\\");
nrElm:=@Elements(List);
@Subset(List;-1)