System and method for providing extensible controls in a communities framework

A method of providing extensible controls for a communities framework, said method comprising:

• rendering a portal on a computer, said portal including a plurality of portlets that provide access to a community framework, said community framework including at least one community of user members, wherein the user members share resources associated with the community;
• accessing a repository of resources containing data stored in one or more nodes, each node being associated with a resource type, the resource type having one or more properties;
• wrapping the node with a runtime wrapper object that is dynamically instantiated from a content object class, wherein the wrapper object represents the resource type associated with the node;
• providing an extensible control scoped to said community, the extensible control executing create, read, update and delete (CRUD) operations on the node stored in the repository by accessing the application programming interface (API) of said repository, wherein the extensible control is used to create both a new node in the repository and a new resource type within a single implementation, wherein the extensible control is annotated with a set of annotations to represent said properties of the new resource type and to create the runtime wrapper object that defines the new resource type upon node creation;
• and
• rendering an extensible portlet of said plurality of portlets, said extensible portlet being rendered as part of said portal and being accessible by a user, wherein the extensible portlet is used to create new resources scoped to said community by invoking the extensible control to create new nodes and runtime wrapper objects associated with said nodes.

A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium having instructions stored thereon that when executed by one or more processors cause the one or more processors to:

• render a portal on a computer, said portal including a plurality of portlets that provide access to a community framework, said community framework including at least one community of user members, wherein the user members share resources associated with the community;
• access a repository of resources containing data stored in one or more nodes, each node being associated with a resource type, the resource type having one or more properties;
• wrap the node with a runtime wrapper object that is dynamically instantiated from a content object class, wherein the wrapper object represents the resource type associated with the node;
• provide an extensible control scoped to said community, the extensible control executing create, read, update and delete (CRUD) operations on the node stored in the repository by accessing the application programming interface (API) of said repository, wherein the extensible control is used to create both a new node in the repository and a new resource type within a single implementation, wherein the extensible control is annotated with a set of annotations to represent said properties of the new resource type and to create the runtime wrapper object that defines the new resource type upon node creation;
• and
• render an extensible portlet of said plurality of portlets, said extensible portlet being rendered as part of said portal and being accessible by a user, wherein the extensible portlet is used to create new resources scoped to said community by invoking the extensible control to create new nodes and runtime wrapper objects associated with said nodes.