Have you ever had that life-altering experience where you deleted an important file and immediately regretted deleting it? The deed is usually followed by a palm to the forehead or a sick feeling. Good news! Liferay is here to turn that frown upside down with the Recycle Bin feature. With the Recycle Bin, the Move to the Recycle Bin action replaces Delete for certain asset types. Content is now temporarily stored in the Recycle Bin. This allows the content to be restored back to its original state. Recycled items can expire after a certain period of time, resulting in their permanent deletion. Before diving into how the Recycle Bin works, let’s look at how to configure it.
Configuring the Recycle Bin
To begin using the Recycle Bin, you must enable it where you plan to use it. The
Recycle Bin supports portal-wide scope or site-specific scope. The portal-wide
scope of the Recycle Bin is set by adding the trash.enabled property to your
portal-ext.properties file. We’ll go into more detail for adding this property
and several others to your properties file later in the section. First, let’s
explore the UI and see what the Recycle Bin can do.
First, let’s configure the Recycle Bin for site-specific scoping. Choose the site you’d like configure for the Recycle Bin from My Sites in the Dockbar. Then click Admin → Configuration to navigate to the Site Settings page. Next, click Recycle Bin on the right-side menu under the Advanced heading. You’ll notice a few configurable options:
Enable Recycle Bin: enable and disable settings for the Recycle Bin’s site-specific scope.
Trash Entries Max Age: customize the number of days a file is kept in the Recycle Bin until its permanent deletion (default is 30 days).
Figure 4.13: The Recycle Bin offers several configurable options for your site.
When you’ve finished configuring your Recycle Bin settings, click Save.
You can also configure the Recycle Bin via properties in the portal.properties
file. Remember that it’s a best practice not to edit the portal.properties
directly, but to create a separate portal-ext.properties file containing the
properties to override. There are some additional options not available in the
GUI that you can set:
trash.search.limit=500: set the limit for results used when performing
searches in the Recycle Bin (default is 500).
trash.entry.check.interval=60: set the interval in minutes for how often the
trash handler runs to delete trash entries that have been in the Recycle Bin
longer than the maximum age (default is 60).
Also, as we mentioned earlier, there is a property to enable the Recycle bin portal-wide.
trash.enabled=true: set this property to false to disable the Recycle Bin for
all sites in the portal (default is true).
Next, you should make sure permissions are set properly for users who can handle/view the assets in the Recycle Bin. Users who had View permissions on a document when it was recycled can also view that document in the Recycle Bin. Users who had Update or Delete permissions on a document when it was recycled can restore the document.
Now that you’ve successfully configured the Recycle Bin, let’s look at how to use it.
Using the Recycle Bin
The Recycle Bin is temporary storage configured for multiple asset types across the portal. Instead of offering a specific Recycle Bin for each asset type, Liferay provides a central master Recycle Bin where different asset types can be stored. This provides an easy search and recovery process.
Figure 4.14: The Recycle Bin provides a seamless administrative experience for deleting and removing content.
You can recycle several different types of assets, including:
- Blogs
- Bookmarks
- Documents and Media
- Message Boards (and attachments)
- Web Content
- Wiki (and attachments)
For a quick example to show how easy the Recycle Bin is to use, let’s send a web content article to the Recycle Bin and then restore it. We’ll run through two different methods of restoring the file.
-
Navigate to Site Administration → Content → Web Content.
-
Select the Add button and click Basic Web Content.
-
Enter some text for the Title and Content and click Publish.
-
In the top right corner of the web content, select the arrow and click Move to the Recycle Bin.
Note that the Delete button is not listed. Liferay avoids the risk of accidental deletion of your files by funneling the content through the Recycle Bin.
-
After deleting the file, a success message appears, offering an Undo option. Click Undo. The web content is retrieved from the Recycle Bin and stored in its original place.
-
Select the Move to the Recycle Bin button again.
-
Navigate back to Site Administration and click the Recycle Bin button from the menu.
-
Find your sample web content and click its Actions tab.
-
You can restore or delete the content. Select Restore.
Figure 4.15: In the Recycle Bin, you have the option of restoring or permanently deleting the content.
-
Navigate back to the Web Content screen and notice that your sample web content was restored back to its original place.
Congratulations! You now know the two general processes of sending and restoring content to/from the Recycle Bin. For other asset types, the Recycle Bin works similarly.
Some Liferay applications, such as Web Content and Documents and Media, support folders into which their content can be organized. You can also send folders and sub-folders to the Recycle Bin. Keep in mind that this sends the entire folder/sub-folder structure and all files to the Recycle Bin. Folders and sub-folders are restored and deleted the same way as a single file. Also, expired web content can be moved to the Recycle Bin and restored, just like a regular file.
In step 9 of the example, you probably noticed the Delete button from within the Recycle Bin. This is the permanent delete button. Once you select this, your file cannot be retrieved and is gone forever. There is also an Empty the Recycle Bin button located at the top of the Recycle Bin screen. This permanently deletes all the files from the Recycle Bin. Next, let’s discuss how to use the drag and drop feature.
Drag and Drop
A quick and easy way to dispose of your unwanted assets is to drag and drop them into the Recycle Bin. While you’re in the Control Panel, you can simply select an asset and drag it to the Recycle Bin portlet located on the Control Panel menu. When you click and begin dragging the asset, a message appears near your cursor notifying you of the amount of files ready to be moved, and the Recycle Bin is highlighted, showing you where the files can be dropped. After you drop the asset onto the Recycle Bin portlet, the asset is removed from its original location and transferred to the Recycle Bin.
Figure 4.16: A quick and easy way of disposing your items is the drag and drop method.
Next, let’s explore the Recycle Bin’s intelligence and behind the scenes support that aids in a seamless recycling experience.
Recycle Bin intelligence and support
Have you ever wondered if it’s possible to check the IQ of a software feature? Unfortunately, there is no tangible way to do this; however, if there were, the Liferay Recycle Bin would be at the top of its class. As we’ve mentioned already, it supports multiple asset types, a drag and drop feature, an Undo option, and many more. Have you ever wondered what happens to file shortcuts if their linked assets are recycled? What if you restore a file that has the same name as another file currently stored in your site/portal? The Recycle Bin already knows how to handle these types of issues for a seamless user experience.
When documents with shortcuts are moved to the Recycle Bin, the shortcuts are invalidated. This ensures your portal has active links and shortcuts at all times. This cuts down on maintenance time and backtracking after recycling an important asset.
Another important trait is the duplicate name recognition feature. When a file is restored, the Recycle Bin scans the corresponding asset type files currently in the site/portal to check for duplicate file names. If a duplicate file name is found, the Recycle Bin prompts you to overwrite the existing file or rename the file name you’re trying to restore.
For example, suppose you have the document file1 stored in the Recycle Bin and
you have a separate document you created later with the same name in the
document library. If you try to restore the file1 document, the Recycle Bin
recognizes duplicate names and prompts you to overwrite the existing document
in the document library or rename the document you’re trying to restore.
Figure 4.17: The Recycle Bin always scans your site/portal for duplicate file names during the restoration process.
Although the Recycle Bin prohibits the restoration of files that match pre-existing file names in your site/portal, it will store files with matching names.
Have you thought about how the Recycle Bin works during the staging process? Although we stated earlier that there is only one master Recycle Bin, the staging process requires a bit more flexibility with the Recycle Bin to maximize its productivity. Therefore, when staging is enabled, there is a new and separate Recycle Bin: the Staging Recycle Bin. The original Recycle Bin, or Live Recycle Bin, holding unstaged material is still viewable while in staging; however, it is never used.
Figure 4.18: During staging, a separate Recycle Bin appears to keep staging and live content separate.
During staging, everything you recycle is sent to the Staging Recycle Bin. This prevents staged and unstaged recycled content from mixing. Do you see why this would be a problem? Consider you have an unstaged document currently on your live site. Next, you enable staging and delete that document. If you were to turn staging off and return to the live site, without separate Recycle Bins, the live document would be located on your site and in the Recycle Bin! Because of this, the separate Staging Recycle Bin is necessary and only used during the staging process. Finally, when you publish your staged material to live, the Staging Recycle Bin content is transferred to the Live Recycle Bin.
The Recycle Bin saves you time by letting you restore content that’s been recycled. Instead of recreating or re-uploading content, you’ll be tailoring your Liferay portal to fully leverage its capabilities.