Portals and portlets
Sean C. Sullivan
October 24, 2006
Portland Java Users Group
Overview
• Portals
• Portal servers
• Java Portlets
• Portlet programming
• Portlet deployment
• Demo
What is a portal?
A portal is a web based application that [...]
provides personalization, authentication, content
aggregation from different sources and hosts the
presentation layer of information systems
source: Java Portlet 2.0 specification
Portal servers
• Liferay
• IBM Websphere Portal
• JBoss Portal
• BEA WebLogic Portal
• Apache JetSpeed 2
• Sun Portal Server
• Apache Pluto
• Oracle Portal
• eXo platform
• uPortal
Portal server features
• personalization
• single sign-on
• security: users, groups, roles
• portlet admin: deploy, undeploy
• page layout
• pre-built portlets
Liferay portal demo
• http://demo.liferay.net/
Portlet fragments
The content generated by a portlet is also
called a fragment. A fragment is a piece of
markup (e.g. HTML, XHTML, WML)
adhering to certain rules and can be
aggregated with other fragments to form a
complete document. The content of a portlet
is normally aggregated with the content of
other portlets to form the portal page.
source: Java Portlet 2.0 specification
Java Portlet specifications
• Portlet 1.0
– JSR-168
• Portlet 2.0
– JSR-286
Java Portlet API
• javax.portlet.Portlet
• javax.portlet.GenericPortlet
• javax.portlet.ActionRequest
• javax.portlet.ActionResponse
• javax.portlet.RenderRequest
• javax.portlet.RenderResponse
javax.portlet.Portlet
• public void destroy()
• public void init(PortletConfig cfg)
• public void processAction(ActionRequest,
ActionResponse)
• public void render(RenderRequest,
RenderResponse)
javax.portlet.GenericPortlet
• protected void doView(...)
• protected void doEdit(...)
• protected void doHelp(...)
• protected void processAction(...)
Hello World Portlet
public class HelloWorldPortlet
extends javax.portlet.GenericPortlet
{
public void doView(RenderRequest req,
RenderResponse resp)
{
resp.setContentType("text/html");
PrintWriter w = resp.getWriter();
w.println("Hello world");
}
}
JBoss Portal demo
• http://portal.demo.jboss.com/
Portlet requests
1. Action requests
2. Render requests
Portlet modes
javax.portlet.PortletMode
1. EDIT
2. VIEW
3. HELP
Portlet window states
javax.portlet.WindowState
1. MAXIMIZED
2. MINIMIZED
3. NORMAL
Portlet deployment
• WAR
• web.xml
• portlet.xml
What's new in Java Portlet 2.0?
• Resource serving
• Events
• Portlet filters
• alignment with WSRP 2.0
Additional topics
• Caching
• CSS
• Internationalization
• File upload
• Inter-portlet communication
• Wrapping existing applications
• WSRP
Resources
• http://wiki.java.net/bin/view/Javapedia/Portal
• http://wiki.java.net/bin/view/Javapedia/Portlet
• http://www.jcp.org/en/jsr/detail?id=168
• http://www.jcp.org/en/jsr/detail?id=286