Deepak Gothe's Weblog: Portlets, JSF Based Portlets and more...

Consider a JSF Portlet having a navigation(what is a JSF app without navigation!!), for example a Search JSF Portlet. It has two pages, "Search Criteria Page" and "Search Results Page".  After you enter the criteria on "Search Criteria Page" and click submit, you will get a "Search Results Page". Add this JSF Portlet on a page in Web Space or Liferay. Now visit some other page and comeback to the page on which you added the JSF Portlet, you will see that it is showing "Search Results Page", i.e the state is retained. This is as per spec and is the correct behaviour. What if you want to see "Search Criteria Page" everytime you visit the page. This can be achieved as follows.

1. In your JSF Portlet, add the following init parameter in the portlet.xml

        <init-param>
            <name>com.sun.faces.portlet.CLEARING_STATE_ENABLED</name>
            <value>true</value>
        </init-param>

2. In Web Space / Liferay, Click on "Manage Pages"

3. Select the page that has JSF Portlet(in this example, i have it on "jsftest" page). In the "Query String" textfield, enter the value com.sun.faces.portlet.CLEAR_STATE=true. Save the page.

Now whenever you visit the page you will see the "Search Criteria Page". But if you are doing any action on any other portlet on that page, "Search JSF Portlet" will retain the state. It will not reset to "Search Criteria Page". Resetting happens only when you visit the page. This means, suppose, there is another JSR286 portlet or a JSF Portlet on that page and "Search JSF Portlet" shows "Search Results Page". If you are doing any action on the other portlet and after the page is rendered, "Search JSF Portlet" will continue to show "Search Results Page".

I have been blogging about the features of JSR 286(Java Portlet Specification 2.0) from the time the expert group(of which i was one of the members representing Sun Microsystems), started publishing the draft specification. Everytime one asks me how a feature in JSR 286 works, i have to point him to one of my blogs. A comprehensive article on all features of JSR 286 was missing.

I have written a comprehensive article that includes all features of JSR 286 with examples. This also includes less talked about ones like wild card in eventing, alias support, Portlet URL listeners, etc..If you see that any feature is missing or if there any corrections to be done, let me know, i will incorporate them. Thanks.

The comprehensive article on JSR 286 is at https://portlet-container.dev.java.net/docs/jsr286.html

There has been lot of queries asking me how to send/receive events with portlets that are not on same page. So I thought let me blog about this.

In order to provide coordination between portlets the Java Portlet Specification, JSR 286 introduces Eventing and Public Render Parameters

Eventing:

   By default portlets can send and receive events with other portlets that are on the same page. This can be changed to enable portlets to send and receive events from other portlets that are on different pages. This can be done by adding the following property in portal-ext.properties in Web Space server and Liferay Portal 5.2.x.

portlet.event.distribution=ALL_PORTLETS

Public Render Parameters:

   By default portlets can share render states with other portlets that are on the same page. This can be changed to enable portlets to share render states with other portlets that are on different pages. This can be done by adding the following property in portal-ext.properties in Web Space server and Liferay Portal 5.2.x.

portlet.public.render.parameter.distribution=ALL_PORTLETS

Preventing infinite loops in Eventing:

    The following property is used to specify the maximum number of events that can be generated from portlets to prevent infinite loops. If a portlet sends an event to other portlets, it is considered as one event generation. If the other portlets send events, that is considered as two event generations and so on. The default value is 3.

portlet.event.max.generation=3

There has been discussion in ICEFaces forum and at http://portlet-container.dev.java.net mailing list regarding deploying ICEFaces Portlet in OpenPortal Portlet Container. The issue is that after deploying the ICEFaces portlet(that uses AJAX push capability), when you access the Portlet, you get an ICEfaces popup window in the browser with the message "user session expired" and a "Reload" button. Thanks to the ICEFaces team, they found the issue and mentioned that it was related to the cookies for JSESSIONID and paths. The problem is that the portlet container is running in its own context(/portletdriver) separate from the ICE Faces portlet's context for Ajax requests. And the solution suggested was to deploy the portletdriver at root context.

I found another solution which works if you don't want to deploy portletdriver to the root context. This also works for the case where you deploy Web Space server to a non-root context.

This involves adding the following to the sun-web.xml

   <session-config>
        <cookie-properties>
            <property name="cookiePath" value="/" />
        </cookie-properties>
    </session-config>

After adding this entry you need to redeploy the portletdriver.war/webspace.war.

If you are using OpenPortal Portlet Container on Tomcat, you need to add emptySessionPath to the server.xml.

 <Connector port="8080" .... 
         emptySessionPath="true" /> 

The Portlet Container 2.x that is part of  Sun GlassFish Web Space Server , Liferay and OpenPortal Portlet Container uses JDK logging (JSR 47) for logging messages , exceptions etc. By default the log level in GlassFish is INFO. If you need to disable the portlet container logs or change the log level, how to do it?. Following are the steps..

1. Login to GlassFish adminconsole(default: localhost:4848)
2. Click on "Application Server" on the left side.Then click on Logging->Log levels as shown below
   
   
   
   
   
3. Then scroll down and click on "Add Property" and enter the "debug.com.portal.portletcontainer" in Name field and any valid JDK Log level(eg: INFO or WARNING or SEVERE etc..) in Value field as shown below.
   
   
   
   
   
4. Click on "Save". This should take effect immediately, no restart is required.

The OpenPortal Portlet Container 2.1 has been released.

The Portlet Container 2.1 is also part of following releases

• Sun GlassFish Web Space Server 10.0

• Liferay version 5.2 and higher

Why the version is called 2.1 and not 2.0 update 2 ?

Because, this release has lot of changes and is a major release. Following is brief list of changes  that went into this release

• Major enhancements to support WSRP 2.0 FCS, GlassFish Web Space Server and Liferay version 5.2.
• New features like XMLPortletRequest.
• Jar name changes to support the deployment of OpenPortal Portlet Container and GlassFish Web Space Server on the same domain of GlassFish.
  
• The third party jars used by the driver have been updated(like commons-fileupload, JSTL and Standard jars)

It is recommended that you uninstall previous versions before installing this release.

Following developer tools are available to develop, deploy and test portlets on the OpenPortal Portlet Container 2.1.

• Netbeans Portlet Pack 3.0

• Eclipse Portal Pack

If you have questions on how to use the OpenPortal Portlet Container and other comments/suggestions/requests, we urge you to join the users@portlet-container.dev.java.net alias.

Please report any issues that you encounter while trying OpenPortal Portlet Container to issues@portlet-container.dev.java.net.

Sun GlassFish Web Space Server 10.0 has been released. This release uses Portlet Container 2.1. 

The Portlet Container 2.1 is a fully compliant implementation of the Portlet 2.0 (JSR286) specification. And it also implements many of the optional features like

• expiration and validation caching
• support for alias in eventing and public render parameters
• support for wild card in eventing
• support for setting Markup head elements
  

You get all these features in Sun GlassFish Web Space Server 10.0 which is based on Liferay Portal 5.2.  Apart from that we have added XMLPortletRequest. More about XMLPortletRequest in my next blog.

JSR 286 (Portlet 2.0 specification) allows the portlet to set HTML elements like <link>, <script>, <meta> in the <head> section of the portal page. This can be achieved via the addProperty method on the RenderResponse with MimeResponse.MARKUP_HEAD_ELEMENT as property name and org.w3c.dom.Element as value.

Following is the code snippet..

import javax.portlet.GenericPortlet;  
import javax.portlet.RenderRequest;  
import javax.portlet.RenderResponse;  
import javax.portlet.MimeResponse;  
import org.w3c.dom.Element;  

public class TestPortlet extends GenericPortlet {  

    @Override
    protected void doHeaders(RenderRequest request, RenderResponse response) {

        Element metaDescription = response.createElement("meta");
        metaDescription.setAttribute("name", "description");
        metaDescription.setAttribute(
              "content", "everything you want to know about stamps");
        response.addProperty(
              MimeResponse.MARKUP_HEAD_ELEMENT, metaDescription);

        Element metaKeywords = response.createElement("meta");
        metaKeywords.setAttribute("name", "keywords");
        metaKeywords.setAttribute("content", "stamps, history");
        response.addProperty(MimeResponse.MARKUP_HEAD_ELEMENT, metaKeywords);

    }

....

}

This feature has been implemented in OpenPortal Portlet Container 2.0 Update 1.

There has been lot of confusion regarding the role of container runtime option (javax.portlet.renderHeaders) while setting the headers. I get the following question a lot:

Is the container runtime option (javax.portlet.renderHeaders) needed if the portlet wants to set headers?

The answer: It depends on whether the portal is a streaming portal or a buffering portal.
First the definition: In case of streaming portal, the output of the portlet is not buffered, while it is buffered in case of buffering portal.
The buffering portal can ignore the container runtime option whereas it is mandatory in case of streaming portal.

In case of OpenPortal Portlet Container, Project WebSynergy which are buffering portals, the container runtime option(javax.portlet.renderHeaders) is not required to be present in the portlet.xml of the portlet that wants to set the headers.

The OpenPortal Portlet Container 2.0 Update 1 runs on GlassFish v3 Prelude

Set ANT_HOME and use CLI to install as follows (there is an issue with GUI install)

java -jar portlet-container-configurator.jar glassfishv3-prelude\glassfish glassfishv3-prelude\glassfish\domains\domain1

Note: the glassfish home is glassfishv3-prelude\glassfish

Please report any issues that you encounter to users@portlet-container.dev.java.net.

The OpenPortal Portlet Container 2.0 Update 1(2.0_01) has been released.

The OpenPortal Portlet Container 2.0_01 is also part of Java Application Platform SDK Update 6.

This release has some important fixes and enhancements to support WSRP Beta and Liferay integration. The changelog contains issues resolved. It is recommended that you uninstall previous versions before installing this release.

Following developer tools are available to develop, deploy and test portlets on the Portlet Container 2.0_01.

• Netbeans Portlet Pack 2.0 & 3.0
• Eclipse Portal Pack
  

If you have questions on how to use the OpenPortal Portlet Container and other comments/suggestions/requests, we urge you to join the users@portlet-container.dev.java.net alias.

Please report any issues that you encounter while trying OpenPortal Portlet Container to issues@portlet-container.dev.java.net.

The first milestone of Eclipse Portal Pack 2.0 has been released. Check the website for more details.

 Currently there are three plugins:

   1. JSR-286/168 Portlet Builder Plugin

          This plugin allows a developer to create a JSR-286/168 Portlet Project in the Eclipse IDE, using the wizards.

   2. WebSynergy Plugin

          This plugin registers the WebSynergy running under Glassfish in Eclipse IDE as a Server Runtime.

   3. OpenPortal Portlet Container Plugin

          This plugin registers the OpenPortal Portlet Container running under Glassfish in Eclipse IDE as a Server Runtime.

In this blog i will talk about the support for public render parameter (new feature that was added in Portlet 2.0 specification) in the JSF Portlet Bridge.

In JSFPortletBridge version 1.2.3 an enhancement was added to keep track of request scoped information. Check the issue 30 for more details. This feature can be used to support the sharing of render parameters among jsf portlets. I will explain how to do it. The example war and source is referenced at the end.

1. First you need to set the following initialization parameter in the portlet.xml for the portlet that wants to share the render parameter
       <init-param>
            <name>com.sun.faces.portlet.SAVE_REQUEST_SCOPE</name>
            <value>true</value>
        </init-param>      

This causes the form parameters to be set as render parameters. As a result all form parameters are available in the render of the portlet.

2. Now identify the parameter to be shared and specify it in the portlet.xml. Since JSF generates the name, you need to specify the generated name in the portlet.xml..For example consider the following snippet

<f:view>
    <h:form id="helloForm">
        .............
    <h:inputText id="userNo" value="#{UserNumberBean.userNumber}"
             validator="#{UserNumberBean.validate}"/>
    .................
    </h:form>
</f:view>

If you want to share the inputText "userNo", then specify the parameter "helloForm:userNo" as supported-public-render-parameter.

If you notice i have dropped the tag <p:portletPage> . This tag causes the portlet namespace to be prepended to the parameter name. The parameter name will be "portletnamespace:helloForm:userNo". The namespace that is generated by the portlet container will be different in each portal. So i have removed it.

The parameter can be specified in the portlet.xml as follows..
<portlet-app>
    <portlet>
    ...........
        <supported-public-render-parameter>helloForm:userNo</supported-public-render-parameter>
    </portlet>
    <public-render-parameter>
        <identifier>helloForm:userNo</identifier>
        <qname xmlns:x="http://www.sun.com/params">x:userNumber</qname>
    </public-render-parameter>
</portlet-app>

3. If another JSF Portlet also specifies the same parameter as supported-public-render-parameter, then it can access the parameter as

    FacesContext context = FacesContext.getCurrentInstance();
    PortletRequest request = (PortletRequest)context.getExternalContext().getRequest();
    return request.getParameter("helloForm:userNo");

This will return the value entered in the first JSF Portlet.

Deploy the guessnumbersharedportlet.war on OpenPortal Portlet Container 2.0 and see the public render parameter at work. You can check the sources to see how this is done. The sample will work on Project WebSynergy and Liferay Portal also.

Recently OpenPortal Portlet Container was fully integrated in Liferay Portal.

The OpenPortal Portlet Container is a fully compliant implementation of the Portlet 2.0 (JSR286) specification. And it also implements many of the optional features like expiration and validation caching, support for alias in eventing and public render parameters, support for wild card in eventing. It is already a part of Project WebSynergy and  Sun Java System Portal Server 7.2.

The WSRP 2.0 implementation provided by the WSRP Project works seamlessly with our Portlet Container. Thus the embedding of the Portlet Container in Liferay Portal  ensures that the WSRP 2.0 implementation can also be integrated.

Similarly you can embed this Portlet Container in any Portal based on the steps documented in this article.

Recently one of colleagues came across an article the TheServerSide.com that explains the "Action Scoped Request attributes" container runtime option. The article uses OpenPortal Portlet Container to explain the feature.

My colleague in his blog talks about this and also why he likes OpenPortal Portlet Container.