Creating Staged Models

Enabling Staging and Export/Import
Step 1 of 7

To implement the Staging framework, you must first specify the entities you want to track. For the Guestbook application, there are two: Guestbooks and Entrys. You can register these entities so they’re recognizable to the Staging framework by implementing the StagedModel interface in your Guestbook’s model classes.

Service Builder generates an app’s models as staged models when certain attributes are specified in the app’s service.xml file. The Guestbook app already defines many of the necessary attributes in its service.xml file, so both your GuestbookModel and EntryModel interfaces already extend the StagedModel interface! For example, your Guestbook app’s EntryModel interface’s declaration looks like this:

public interface EntryModel extends BaseModel<Entry>, GroupedModel, ShardedModel,
    StagedAuditedModel, WorkflowedModel {

The StagedModel interface is implemented by the extension of the StagedAuditedModel interface. Service Builder chose the StagedAuditedModel interface based on the columns you declared. You’ll update this later.

The following Staging-specific attributes/columns are currently defined in the Guestbook app’s service.xml file:

• uuid (required)
• groupId
• companyId (required)
• userId
• userName
• createDate (required)
• modifiedDate (required)

One of the most important attributes used by the Staging framework is the UUID (Universally Unique Identifier). This attribute must be set to true in service.xml for Service Builder to recognize your model as an eligible staged model. The UUID can differentiate entities between environments, because it’s unique across multiple systems.

The companyId, createDate, and modifiedDate columns track the current entity’s instance and creation/modification dates.

The others leverage features of the Staging framework like automatic group mapping or entity level Last Publish Date handling. See the Understanding Staged Models tutorial for more information.

Before adding Staging features to your Guestbook app, you must declare some necessary dependencies.

Declaring Staging Dependencies

There are two Staging-specific dependencies used by the Guestbook’s Staging functionality.

1. Open the guestbook-service module’s build.gradle file.

2. Add the following dependencies within the dependencies block:

   compileOnly group: "com.liferay", name: "com.liferay.exportimport.api", version: "2.1.0"
   compileOnly group: "com.liferay", name: "com.liferay.xstream.configurator.api", version: "2.0.0"
   

3. Save the file, right-click the Guestbook project, and run Gradle → Refresh Gradle Project.

Now you’re ready to begin implementing staging in your app.

Updating the Extended Staged Model Interface

Staged models that extend the StagedAuditedModel interface function independently from the group concept (sometimes referred to as company models). This means that, for example, your guestbook and entry’s scope would not be tracked by the Staging framework. You must add one more column to your service.xml file to convert your models to StagedGroupedModels, so your entities’ scope is tracked correctly.

1. Open your guestbook-service module’s service.xml file and add the lastPublishDate column for both Guestbook and Entry entities:

   <column name="lastPublishDate" type="Date" />
   

2. Run Service Builder. Do this by navigating to the Gradle Tasks pane on the right side of IDE and selecting your project’s build → buildService task.

3. Run Gradle → Refresh Gradle Project to resolve any remaining errors.

Service Builder has updated your models to extend the StagedGroupedModel. For example, your EntryModel interface’s declaration now looks like this:

public interface EntryModel extends BaseModel<Entry>, ShardedModel,
    StagedGroupedModel, WorkflowedModel {

For more information on the available staged model interfaces, see this tutorial.

Excellent! Now it’s time to create your staged model data handlers.

« Enabling Staging and Export/ImportCreating the Entry Staged Model Data Handler »