Auto-Generate an ID When a Document is Opened or Created

Use Case

You want to configure how the application generates IDs (you need IDs that have a certain format for each created topic).

Solution

This could be done implementing a plugin for Oxygen XML Author using the Plugins SDK:

There is a type of plugin called "Workspace Access" that can be used to add a listener to be notified when an editor is opened.

The implemented plugin would intercept the open editor and editor page change events (which occur when a new editor is created) and generate a new ID attribute value on the root element.

The Java code would look like this:

pluginWorkspaceAccess.addEditorChangeListener(new WSEditorChangeListener() {
/**
* @see WSEditorChangeListener#editorOpened(java.net.URL)
*/
@Override
public void editorOpened(URL editorLocation) {
    WSEditor ed = pluginWorkspaceAccess.getEditorAccess
(editorLocation, PluginWorkspace.MAIN_EDITING_AREA);
        generateID(ed);
}
/**
* @see WSEditorChangeListener#editorPageChanged(java.net.URL)
*/
@Override
public void editorPageChanged(URL editorLocation) {
    WSEditor ed = pluginWorkspaceAccess.getEditorAccess
(editorLocation, PluginWorkspace.MAIN_EDITING_AREA);
        generateID(ed);
}
      
private void generateID(WSEditor ed) {
 if(ed.getCurrentPage() instanceof WSAuthorEditorPage) {
  WSAuthorEditorPage authorEditPage = (WSAuthorEditorPage) ed.getCurrentPage();
  AuthorDocumentController ctrl = authorEditPage.getDocumentController();
  AuthorElement root = ctrl.getAuthorDocumentNode().getRootElement();
   if(root.getAttribute("id") == null || 
!root.getAttribute("id").getValue().startsWith("generated_")) {
    ctrl.setAttribute("id", new AttrValue("generated_" + Math.random()), root);
          }
        }
      }
      
    }, PluginWorkspace.MAIN_EDITING_AREA);