Portlets - AI, ML, VR & more

I found following news on jlcp.org - We have begun initial investigations into separating out the various modules of JLCP into independant units. During this research, we will be looking at how we can change JLCP to support the adding of new JLCP specific modules and also standard portlets. Hopefully this will yield some code which allows the current JLCP modules to act as Portlets in a standard portlet container. In addition, the initial cut of the photo gallery is finished and should be deployed at the beginning of the week. I hope jlcp will be another feather in the cap of portets especially when there are not too many successful projects available on portlet technology.

Someone asked on Portlet Discussion Group about how to integregrate existing application using portlets. It is called portletizing application. Here are few of my tips. There are various ways to do it - 1. Put the entire application in one portlet. There are various ways to do this. But the easiest is to use iFrame. 2. Put the entire application into two portlets. Use one portlet as navigation/ menu and other work work-area. It will be a outlook like way. There are few issues associated with it. iFrame can be used in work-area portlet. 3. Task or Operation based portlets. Per portlet will do a specific task like "pay statement" or "emergency contact" etc. But it is nearly redesign of an application. Advantages of existing portlets and JCA connectors can be taken. As I mentioned above, there are various ways to do this aggregation. But the best way takes the most time i.e. 3rd one. There are pros and cons of different approaches. I hope it will be u...

Here I found a very good article on comparison between JSR 168 and IBM Portlet API. It is going to be must-read by IBM Portlet developers, as sooner or later, IBM API is going to be replaced by JSR 168. The document is written on 17th December so it is relatively newer one. Thanks Hepper, but a little more detail would be great. Comparing the JSR 168 Java Portlet Specification with the IBM Portlet API

Yesterday Benjamin informed me on my group that eXo is now JSR 168 compliant. I wish him and his product a big success. I am planning to write about it in detail. But for now you can visit theserverside.com for more details. You can also visit the homepage of eXo Platform .

Here I found some more links related to portlets. Click here .

IBM WebSphere Portal Server way Put these lines for each portlet in web.xml file. <init-param> <param-name>com.ibm.wps.portlet.session</param-name> <param-value>shared</param-value> </init-param> JSR 168 way In the JSR 168 spec the <init-param> does not exist So to share attribut among portlets two scopes from the PortletSession object can be used : PortletSession.PORTLET_SCOPE PortletSession.APPLICATION_SCOPE and use portletSession.setAttibute(attName, attValue, scope) with thanks to Benjamin Mestrallet of 'eXo' fame

My first impression was that it was a fat SERVlet, cousin to MIDlets and bastard offspring of APPlets. - taken from "comp.lang.java.programmer" newsgroup

A huge Struts 2.0 discussion on the struts-dev list has started. Everybody is putting in their ideas of how Struts 2.0 ought to be like. I encourage all Portal/Portlet developers to participate in that discussion in struts-dev and provide their insight on how Struts 2.0 could become a good portlet framework.

I am always troubled by the frequent page refreshes of Portlets. Any person with average speed connection can understand this problem. You are minimizing one portlet, whole the data will be posted to server and page will refresh :( . Few Portal Server vendors have tried to understand problem by implementing some client side scripting. Client Side scripting with Portlets is in-itself is a subject of huge discussion. As on date, Portlets do not support client side scripts like JavaScript very well. Imagine a case where you have coded a portlet with a link, whenever you will click on the link, one window will pop up. You have coded the link & window and now going to click on that link.... .... you clicked ...... . and ........ Alas!!!! ..... the windows opened up in some other portlet :( Portlet vendors don't have any answer of such problems. The problem becomes worse when some of your portlet want to fetch data from the server. What will happen? You know, whole of t...

IBM says that their portal server supports single sign-on. But going through the below given article from IBM, it seems that we need to use separate API to implement single sign-on. It is very strange and I am not able to find-out what level of SSO support exists in IBM Portal. What I concluded is – IBM Portal supports single sign-on for their internal purpose only. For example if you switch form portal view to content publisher view you will not asked for authorization but it will not be the case with custom applications. In other word SSO is supported for IBM applications only, for your own applications you will have to write SSO logic with some (probably open source) API. So if you are planning to integrate few independent applications and thinking that the IBM single-on will work automatically for you, forget it. Build and implement a single sign-on solution

I have created one more blog which will contain all my portlets related study, my OOA/D study and my astrology study. What more is you can also get RSS feed . The link is Portlets Development . You will find most of the information there too.

I found few more portlets/ portals related links and articles here . Most of the articles are Jetspeed (and somewhat IMB Portal) related.

Hello Friends, I am getting several requests to add RSS feed for this blog. At present RSS feed is not supported on blogspot.com. But I just come to know that Awasu (A RSS reader) supports reading ports from yahoogroups so you can get the feed at least from group. Regards, Punit Pandey

Essential guidelines Your portlet code must meet these minimum guidelines to ensure portlet quality. A.1. Refrain from using instance variables. A.2. Pass data to the view (JSP) as a bean in the request object. A.7. Follow Struts design guidelines for Struts portlets. B.1. JSPs should contain HTML fragments only. B.2. Design view to fit on a page with other portlets. B.4. Use portlet style classes instead of specific style-oriented attributes. B.6. URIs, HTML element name attributes, and JavaScript resources must be namespace encoded. D.1.Use portlet settings to store user-independent configuration data. D.2. Use portlet data to store user-dependent configuration data. D.3. Use servlet configuration for storing static initialization information for a portlet. E.1. Limit the use of the portlet session for storing portlet state information. E.2. Do not rely on portlet sessions if the portlet is to allow anonymous access. E.3. Always request an exi...

Introduction to JSR 168 - The Portlet Specification : By Sun

Hello Friends, Now a days, I am working with IBM Portal Server. So you will find most of the information here relevent only for IBM Portal. Anyway, I'll keep posting other portals related information too as and when possible. Punit Pandey

Sharing session and other portlet messeging related discussion

Meet the Experts: Ron Lynn on portlets : "place"

Are you also puzzled like many others what are the uses of portlets, when to use portlets etc.? Then click here for some discussion.

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I would recommend you to call your jsp application from an iframe portlet. You just need to install the iframe portlet and edit it with the URL of your jsp app. Use iframe portlets supplied with IBM Portal Server. Jetspeed pageportlet can also be used. The example of IFRAME Portlet is as follows - <%@ page session="false" contentType="text/html"%> <%@ taglib uri="/WEB-INF/tld/portlet.tld" prefix="portlet" %> <portlet:init/> <% if (portletRequest.getPortletSettings().getAttribute("iframe.enabled").equalsIgnoreCase("true")) { %> <script type="text/javascript"> var initialUri = "<portlet:settingsAttribute name='initial.uri'/>"; // sets initial uri var frameWidth = "<portlet:settingsAttribute name='frame.width'/>"; // sets frame width var frameHeight = "<portlet:settingsAttribute name='frame.height'/>"; // sets frame hei...

Hello Friends, I found a page having extnesive list of links related to IBM portal. Here it is - http://cgse1.cgselearning.com/zone-portal.html Punit Pandey

Hello Friends, Here you will find list of some popular open source portal products - Liferay eXo Pluto JA-SIG uPortal Redhat Portal Server Jakarta Jetspeed Jahia Gluecode Portal Foundation Server jPortlet Cocoon Portal Framework jPorta MyPersonalizer oPortal For brief of above products please visit - http://www.manageability.org/blog/stuff/open_source_portal_servers_in_java

As we all know that newsgroups are still best discussion medium on Internet. I was searching for portlets related discussion and found following two (one from IBM and other from BEA) - NEWS SERVER: newsgroups.bea.com GROUP ADDRESS: weblogic.developer.interest.portal NEWS SERVER: news.software.ibm.com GROUP ADDRESS: ibm.software.websphere.portal-server I hope it will be useful.

Applying the State Pattern to WebSphere Portal Portlets -- Part 1 Overview http://www7b.software.ibm.com/wsdd/library/techarticles/0212_hanis/hanis1.html Applying the State Pattern to WebSphere Portal Portlets -- Part 2 Implementation http://www7b.software.ibm.com/wsdd/library/techarticles/0212_hanis/hanis2.html Create your own portlet and Web service http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/ibm/library/i-wsportlets/ IBM Portal Server Resources http://e.bis.business.utah.edu/resources/wps_project.htm The case for portlets http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/ibm/library/i-portletintro/ WebSphere Portal Programming Pervasive Portlet Development http://www7b.software.ibm.com/wsdd/techjournal/0207_wanderski/wanderski.html WebSphere Portal Server programming Portlet application programming, Part 1 http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/ibm/library/i-portal/ WebSphere Portal programming Portlet application programming, Part 2 http://www-106.ibm.com/develope...

Please note the URL of POST (Portlet Open Source Trading Site) jointly formed by Plumtree, documentum, bea, and Sun. http://portlet-opensrc.sourceforge.net/ I wish, IBM would be there too. FAQs Says as follows - What are the new JSR 168 and WSRP portal standards? To help our customers create a better user experience while trimming their integration and customization costs, leading software vendors can help ensure portlets use open portal standards such as JSR 168 and WSRP. JSR 168, developed by the Java Community Process and formally approved, was created to establish a standard portlet application programming interface (API) to ensure interoperability among portals, portlets, applications and other content sources. Java Specification Request 168 (JSR 168), has been developed and governed by the Java Community Process (JCP) standards committee Approved October 2003 Java only – backed by all portal vendors, BEA, IBM, SUN, Plumtree to name a few All portal v...

If you do not have IBM portal server client installation on your systems and still you want to dive into portlet development and deployment, then herezzzz how u do it ... Install the latest version of Jetspeed (Freeware ...geeze :-0) http://jakarta.apache.org/jetspeed/site/index.html The IBM portlet API is fully based on the open source API http://jakarta.apache.org/jetspeed/api/index.html In case you have any probs in installation... Knock my door .!! Cheers 'n happy portLetting