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

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.