In the current version of Alfresco (3.4d) the validation ‘fails silently’ which means you can’t dynamically display error message. When validation fails it’s not possible to submit the form. There are foundations for enhancement of this mechanism so it’s quite possible the ‘full’ validation will be available in near future.
You can

download full eclipse ant project for my example here

. I will provide
instructions for manual installation as well.
Ant installation
1. Set paths to tomcat directory in build.properties
TOMCAT_HOME=/opt/alfresco-3.4.d/tomcatAPP_TOMCAT_HOME=/opt/alfresco-3.4.d/tomcat
2. Just run ‘ant’ in project directory.

So, let’s start the core of this tutorial.
1. I implemented my own simple data model for this example. As it is not complicated, nor directly connected with validation its self I just attach needed files with my project.If you’re not familiar with defining data models you can read about it for instance, here
tutorial:http://www.tribloom.com/blogs/michael/2011/04/18/alfresco-repository-webscript/

detailed documentation: http://wiki.alfresco.com/wiki/Data_Dictionary_Guide#The_Data_Dictionary
validationModel.xml goes to /opt/alfresco-3.4.d/tomcat/webapps/alfresco/WEB-INF/classes/alfresco/extension/model
validation-model-context.xml goes to /opt/alfresco-3.4.d/tomcat/webapps/alfresco/WEB-INF/classes/alfresco/extension/

2. share-config-validation-custom.xml goes to /opt/alfresco-3.4.d/tomcat/webapps/share/WEB-INF/classes/alfresco/web-extension
This file contains definition of create and edit forms for the new data type.
Piece of code concerning validation:

<field id="ex:gross" label-id="example.price.gross" mandatory="true"
	help-id="example.price.gross.help">
	<constraint-handlers>
		<!-- validation-handler param: js function name -->
		<constraint type="MANDATORY"
			validation-handler="Alfresco.forms.validation.exampleGrossValidation"
			event="keyup" />
	</constraint-handlers>
</field>

Alfresco.forms.validation.exampleGrossValidation is the name of js validation
function.
3. exampleFormValidation.js and exampleFormValidation-min.js go to/opt/alfresco-3.4.d/tomcat/webapps/share/components/form

Alfresco.forms.validation.exampleGrossValidation = function exampleGrossValidation(field, args,
  event, form, silent, message) {
 

  var valid = true;

  valid = YAHOO.lang.trim(field.value).length !== 0;  // check if field is not empty

// referencing to form fields is possible by following convention:
// field object passed to function representing validated field has an object form representing the whole form
// field object names are created by concating 'prop_'+{namespace from data model}_+{property name from data model}
  var net = field.form.prop_ex_net.value;
  var gross = field.form.prop_ex_gross.value;
  var rate = field.form.prop_ex_rate.value;

  var check = ((rate/100) + 1) * net;

  if((Math.abs(gross - check)) > 0.01)  // check if gross has a valid value with given precision
{
valid = false;
}

  return valid;
};

 

4. exampleValidation_pl_PL.properties (labels for forms) goes to/opt/alfresco-3.4.d/tomcat/webapps/share/WEB-INF/classes/alfresco/messages

You have to modify following files:

1. slingshot-application-context.xml at /opt/alfresco-3.4.d/tomcat/webapps/share/WEB-INF/classes/alfresco/
Paths to share-config-validation-custom.xml and exampleValidation_pl_PL.properties go there
At xPath ‘/beans/bean/constructor-arg/list’ add:

<value>classpath:alfresco/web-extension/share-config-validation-custom.xml</value>
At xPath ‘/beans/bean/property/list’ add:

<value>alfresco.messages.exampleValidation</value>

2. form.get.head.ftl – link to .js fileat /opt/alfresco-3.4.d/tomcat/webapps/share/WEB-INF/classes/alfresco/site-webscripts/org/alfresco/components/form
Add: <@script type=”text/javascript” src=”${page.url.context}/res/components/form/exampleFormValidation.js”></@script>

3. toolbar.get.config.xml - In this file we can add a new option in menu ‘Create content’ in Alfresco Share Site.
at /opt/alfresco-3.4.d/tomcat/webapps/share/WEB-INF/classes/alfresco/site-webscripts/org/alfresco/components/documentlibrary/
add :
<content mimetype=”text/xml” icon=”xml” label=”example.price.menu” itemid=”ex:price”/>

2. Every time after starting alfresco by {alfresco install dir}\servicerun START execute also{alfresco install dir}\openoffice\scripts\openoffice_servicerun START.

3. If you’re not happy with auto starting openoffice service with Windows change alfrescoOpenOffice execution
type to “Manual”.

4. MS Office documents preview in Alfresco should be working just fine now

"Unable to locate the Javac Compiler in:C:\\Program
Files\\Java\\jre6\..\\lib\\tools.jar
Please ensure you are using JDK 1.4 or above and
not a JRE (the com.sun.tools.javac.Main class is required).
In most cases you can change the location of your Java
installation by setting the JAVA_HOME environment variable"

,nevertheless I have proper installation of newest Java JDK and JAVA_HOME is properly set.
The problem never occured before.

Solution:

I know two possible causes of that problem:

1. Eclipse uses its own JRE to start, and IAM does the same. You’ve recently installed a new maven plugin and it requires JDK.
You can force Eclipse to start using directly given Java VM by starting it that way from command line:

“X:\\path\to\\eclipse\\eclipse.exe -vm JAVA_JDK_PATH”

2. There also cases when IAM brokes up without apparent cause, and that happend to me.
The reason may be IAM itself.
Try standard tricks checklist from my another post here:
Problems using Eclipse IAM and Maven

Eg. it may result in a stack trace similiar to:

org.springframework.beans.factory.parsing.BeanDefinitionParsingException: Configuration problem:
Failed to import bean definitions from URL location [classpath:alfresco/application-context.xml]
Offending resource: ServletContext resource [/WEB-INF/web-application-context.xml];
nested exception is org.springframework.beans.factory.parsing.BeanDefinitionParsingException:
 Configuration problem: Failed to import bean definitions from URL location
 [classpath*:alfresco/extension/*-context.xml]Offending resource: class path resource
[alfresco/application-context.xml]; nested exception is
org.springframework.beans.factory.xml.XmlBeanDefinitionStoreException:
Line 1 in XML document from file [D:\\xxxxxx-model-context.xml] is invalid;
nested exception is org.xml.sax.SAXParseException:
The processing instruction target matching "[xX][mM][lL]" is not allowed.
at org.springframework.beans.factory.parsing.FailFastProblemReporter.error(FailFastProblemReporter.java:68)
....

Also watch out for the empty characters at the end of file paths in configuration xmls cause problems, alfresco can’t find these files.

HKLM/SOFTWARE/Apache Software Foundation/…..

or more conveniently you can use tomcat6w.exe GUI:

tomcat6w //ES//<serviceName> (eg. tomcat6w //ES//alfrescoTomcat)

calls a neat window where you can edit variables you need to run your web app properly.

there’s also //MS// parameter which will call a simple application monitoring given service:

tomcat6w //MS//<serviceName>

If you want to read more about running Tomcat as Windows service with tomcat6.exe go to an article from Apache Tomcat documentation.

Hope this helps someone:)

A short example:

POST <host>/alfresco/service/cmis/queries
Content-Type:application/cmisquery+xml
Http basic auth required!
<cmis:query xmlns:cmis="http://docs.oasis-open.org/ns/cmis/core/200908/">
1.	<cmis:statement>SELECT cmis:name, SCORE() FROM cmis:document WHERE CONTAINS('niceWord')</cmis:statement>
	<cmis:searchAllVersions>true</cmis:searchAllVersions>
        <cmis:includeAllowableActions>false</cmis:includeAllowableActions>
        <cmis:includeRelationships>none</cmis:includeRelationships>
        <cmis:renditionFilter>*</cmis:renditionFilter>
2.     	<cmis:maxItems>50</cmis:maxItems>
3.     	<cmis:skipCount>0</cmis:skipCount>
</cmis:query>

A few important details:

1. SCORE() returns relevance of document found against expression passed to CONTAINS() function. In Alfresco you can use powerful FTS language as CONTAINS() parameter but it means losing compliance with CMIS-SQL standard.

• Info about FTS is delivered here: http://wiki.alfresco.com/wiki/Full_Text_Search_Query_Syntax,
• and standard CMIS-SQL CONTAINS() syntax is desribed here:  http://wiki.alfresco.com/wiki/CMIS_Query_Language#text_search_predicate

2. , 3. Paging effect. It’s recommend to always use paging because Alfresco doesn’t guarantee that it will return all entries if there is a lot of them.

And that’s all, you will receive a neat list of entries meeting your requirements.

java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: org.springframework.web.context.ContextLoaderListener

during start of Tomcat.

Every source pointed to problems with spring.jar, so I suspected having some version conflict between my Spring libraries (eg. I used also Spring-WS in an old version). But that wasn’t real cause and I’d wasted a lot of time. The real problem was faulty Eclipse IAM plugin.

Try out some tricks I’ve described in my another article : Problems using Eclipse IAM and Maven

They really may help you.

Generally I perceived that Eclipse IAM tends to lose jars from pom.xml, what leads to unexpected, bizarre time wasting NoClassDefFoundError.

Unfortunately I hadn’t been sucessful in finding causes of my problems but I’d like to share with you my standard ‘IAM problems checklist’

If you have any problems try this (in specified order) :

1. Use refresh, then fetch source jars option from maven menu.
2. Try cleaning maven libraries, then do ’1.’
3. After doing ’2.’, remove your app from Tomcat, clean server, then deploy again.
4. Try removing whole server, then add it again.
5. REMOVE AND REGENERATE WHOLE WORKSPACE

Any step mentioned above is not a joke. I had really to ‘reset’ workspace a few times to make things work again.. First three steps helped me in 80% cases.

I hope my tips will save your time.