It probably won’t make your admins happy if you constantly use print(“this”) in you Server-Side JavaScript code to print debug or error messages to the server’s console. Luckily there is a good alternative: use OpenNTF’s OpenLog project to log everything to a central database. The only problem is that the database doesn’t contain a library for Xpages (yet).

After some digging I found out that the TaskJam app from Elguji Software does have a SSJS library to be able to log messages from to the OpenLog database. To use it:

• Download the OpenLog database and copy it to your server.
• Download TaskJam.
• Copy the OpenLogXPages script library from the TaskJam template to your XPage application.
• Open your copy of the OpenLogXPages script library and update the variable “logDbPath” to reflect the path and location of your OpenLog database.
• The OpenLogXPages script library contains code specifically for TaskJam that tries to retrieve the location of the log database from a view called vwControlPanel: disable that code.
• On two places in the script library a variable called location is set to session.getURL(); if not specified. This is used in the log entries to show were the message came from. Since that property doesn’t always return the correct location, I”ve changed it to view.getPageName();
• Add the OpenLogXpages script library to every page you want to debug/ log information. You can do this by adding a “resource” to basic/ resources property of your XPage or Custom Control (clientSide = false, location = /OpenLogXPages.jss). I’ve added the library to a Custom Control that is loaded on every XPage.

You’re now able to log events or error messages in your SSJS code by using:

log.logEvent( "Hello world" );
log.logError( e.toString(), null, e );

Since you’ve already downloaded TaskJam: don’t forget to have a look at it. It contains some good examples of how to use XPages.

function isAuthor( doc:NotesDocument ) {

    var level = doc.getParentDatabase().getCurrentAccessLevel();
        
    if (level >= 4) {
        return true;        //editor or higher
    } else if (level < 3) {
        return false;        //reader or lower
    } else {    //author
        
        var authors = doc.getItemValue("docAuthors");        //field containing all document authors
        if (authors === null) { return false; }        //no authors field present
        
        var userName = @UserName().toLowerCase();
        var roles = context.getUser().getRoles();  

        for (var i=0; i<authors.length; i++) {
            if (authors[i].substring(0,1) == "[") {        //role
                for (var j=0; j<roles.length; j++) {
                    if (authors[i].toLowerCase() == roles[j].toLowerCase()) {        //on of user's roles is in authors field
                        return true;
                    }
                }
                
            } else if (authors[i].toLowerCase() === userName ) {    //username matches one of the values in the authors field
                return true;
            }
        }
    }  

    return false;
} 

UPDATE 1 Serdar Basegmez came up with a Java version for this function. Since he’s from Turkey it will probably even work for users with a dotless-i in their name 🙂

 @SuppressWarnings("unchecked")
public static boolean isAuthor(Document doc, String authorField) {
               
  try {
    Database db=doc.getParentDatabase();
    Session session=db.getParent();
                       
    int level = db.getCurrentAccessLevel();
                             
    if (level >= 4) {
      return true;        //editor or higher
    } else if (level < 3) {
      return false;        //reader or lower
    } else {    //author
   
      Vector<String> authors=doc.getItemValue(authorField);
 
      if (null==authors || authors.isEmpty()) { return false; }        //no authors field present
                         
      Vector<String> checkList=session.evaluate("@UserNamesList");
                           
      for(int i=0; i<checkList.size(); i++) {
        String checkStr=checkList.get(i);
        checkList.set(i, checkStr.toLowerCase(Locale.ENGLISH));
      }
     
      for (int i=0; i<authors.size(); i++) {
        String checkStr=authors.get(i);
        if(checkList.contains(checkStr.toLowerCase(Locale.ENGLISH))) {
          return true;
        }
      }
    }
  } catch (NotesException e) {
    // Nothing to do
  }
         
  return false;
}

UPDATE 2: Philipp Bauer mentioned that you can also check if the current user is allowed to edit a document with the built-in isDocEditable() function:

import com.ibm.domino.xsp.module.nsf.NotesContext;
import lotus.domino.NotesException;

public static boolean isAuthor(Document doc) throws NotesException {
   NotesContext localNotesContext = NotesContext.getCurrent();
   return localNotesContext.isDocEditable(doc);
}