Installing the extension¶

Install the extension from Extension Manager¶

The eGov API extension can ben installed through the typical TYPO3 installation process using the Extension Manager.

During the installation process, you may be invited to install additional suggested extensions that interact with the eGov API extension. These are alls imply suggestions and can safely be ignored if you choose.

Note: If you plan to use Fluid as template engine, then you must install that system extension before installing the eGov API extension. The minimum required version of this system extension is 1.3.0 meaning it requires TYPO3 4.5 or above as Fluid template within the eGov API extension are using the FLUIDTEMPLATE content object which was introduced with TYPO3 4.5.

If you use TYPO3 4.5 or below, you have to create the two proposed caching tables. These tables (not needed anymore with TYPO3 4.6 and above) are being used by the TYPO3 caching framework if you choose to use a database backend (see below).

Since version 1.2.0 a selector plugin has been added, allowing you to show a form aimed at dynamically generating parametrized URIs, for non-TYPO3 websites willing to integrate e-government web service anyway. It has to be activated in Extension Manager:

Configure data caching¶

In order to prevent unnecessary traffic with the eGov servers hosting the web service, data caching should be configured. The extension makes use of TYPO3 caching framework. If you are using TYPO3 prior to 4.6, you have to activate the caching framework using either the Install Tool or by editing file typo3conf/localconf.php and adding following line:

$TYPO3_CONF_VARS['SYS']['useCachingFramework'] = 1;

Activating caching framework will ensure that the same information is not retrieved twice during a single request. However, once the request is over, the cache is flushed as it internally uses a TransientMemoryBackend.

In order to cache data for a longer period of time, you should provide a caching configuration for the eGov API extension. A typical configuration to cache data in the database is:

$TYPO3_CONF_VARS['SYS']['caching']['cacheConfigurations']['egovapi'] = array(
        'frontend' => 't3lib_cache_frontend_VariableFrontend',
        'backend' => 't3lib_cache_backend_DbBackend',
        'options' => array(
                'cacheTable' => 'cf_egovapi',
                'tagsTable' => 'cf_egovapi_tags',
        )
);

Important note: The “cacheTable” and “tagsTable” parts are not relevant anymore if you use TYPO3 4.6 and above as the caching framework uses it own table structure (creation of the corresponding tables when installing the eGov API extension is thus useless as well). See the corresponding task on Forge if you want to learn more.

Please refer to the TYPO3 documentation for further configuration options.

Configure advanced data caching¶

Since web service version 2, the eGov API extension can take advantage of an operation returning recently updated services. This lets you configuring an unlimited cache lifetime (see chapter Configuration) and invalidate cache entry as they are updated. This is done by regularly running (e.g., every 1-2 days) scheduler task “Latest changes in eGov API” for all communities you are retrieving data for.

Configure RealURL¶

If you are using RealURL, the good news is that the eGov API extension comes with a configuration for RealURL.

If your configuration is automatically generated (you have a typo3conf/realurl_autoconf.php file), delete it. It will be recreated by RealURL the next time you render your page and will integrate our postVarSets configuration.

If you manually tweaked the configuration (you have a typo3conf/realurl_conf.php file), here is the configuration we suggest:

'postVarSets' => array(
        '_DEFAULT' => array(
                'audience' => array(
                        array(
                                'GETvar' => 'tx_egovapi_pi1[audience]',
                        ),
                ),
                'view' => array(
                        array(
                                'GETvar' => 'tx_egovapi_pi1[view]',
                        ),
                ),
                'domain' => array(
                        array(
                                'GETvar' => 'tx_egovapi_pi1[domain]',
                        ),
                ),
                'topic' => array(
                        array(
                                'GETvar' => 'tx_egovapi_pi1[topic]',
                        ),
                ),
                'service' => array(
                        array(
                                'GETvar' => 'tx_egovapi_pi1[service]',
                        ),
                ),
                'action' => array(
                        array(
                                'GETvar' => 'tx_egovapi_pi1[action]',
                        )
                ),
                'mode' => array(
                        array(
                                'GETvar' => 'tx_egovapi_pi1[mode]',
                        )
                ),
        ),
),