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Bursting DITA Question

OlegVolkov
1-Newbie

Bursting DITA Question

Hello!

I'm bursting dita maps into Windchill, I'm not experienced enough in Xpath

I made some bursting rules which put each XML Topic together with related Images into a folder named same as first 20 characters of the Title of that topic/task (I based on http://communities.ptc.com/thread/58544 thread).

For example: if I upload some DITA map containing topicref link to topic with a title "Why bursting is good for you", so there will be the folder "/Topics/Why bursting is goo/" crated in my WC context and also XML and related images will be placed in this folder.

What I wish to do... I would like that my "Topics" folder(which has a static name now) where my generared subfolders for each topic are located would be named like a Title in whole map. So each topic would be bursted to

WC CONTEXT HOME/MapTitle/TopicTitle/Topic.xml

The problem is that i guess I need to add some string that gets the Title in Map to topic's location rules, but that title is in another file... No idea how do it.

I have attached my bursting rules.

3 REPLIES 3

Hi Oleg,

What you are trying to do goes against grain of what DITA was invented to achieve.

DITA was invented to allow authors to create reusable "chunks" of content that could be referenced across many map files. It seems that you are authoring your Topics for a single map file. Will there be no reuse of the Topics across maps? If so, saving them to a folder with the map could be confusing for users down the line and you may inadvertantly have duplication.

Further, regardless of your use case, you don't necessarily have to save it in the same folder as the map. An easier approach for navigating to related Topics is to use Windchill's Structure tab for any given Map file.

When a map is bursted into WC, links are created between the map and all referenced Topics. You can see a list of the referenced Topics from the Structure tab and it will link you any of those Topics information pages.

You can continue to save the Topics in a general Topics folder as you have described and the Maps in a different folder. Then users only need to find the Map file rather than scrolling through a folder of Topics and subfolders.

Hope that helps!

I don't know yet how many maps there will be, but not just one, I guess

I'm trying to do that just in case if some person bursts a lot of incorrect content into Windchill, so I don't wan't to mess actual topics with trash content, and also don't want people to burst all the content to one single hardcoded folder(since I don't know how and how many WC contexts there will be).

I'm not saving maps at the same folder, maps may be anywhere, at the map folder, or maybe at the root of context. The idea is not to place topics to some path related to map, i'd like just to get the name of the map to name an upper-level folder. Maybe it shouldn't be a map name, I just don't like the idea of one statically defined folder for all burstings.

Hi Oleg,

I understand wanting to prevent bad content. Do you have workflows setup to review/approve Topics before they become live? The method you describe sounds like you are taking an audit approach. That could be time prohibitive depending on the workload and bad content could more easily slip through.

To answer your original bcf question, the only way your requirements may work is if Topics are only bursted with a Map. Then you could use some XPath to get the parent Map title a the Topic element. If a Topic is already bursted into WC or the Topic is bursted separate from the Map, this won't be possible without some heavy customization.

The better approach would be to save content based on context of the content rather than the referenced material. References are dynamic and can change and cannot be reliably used over time. Proper workflows to keep the content clean are also a best practice.

You might reconsider your content model a bit before attempting to code a solution that doesn't really get you want you want.

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