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The Portlet Packet: A quickstart guide to Portlet 2.0
Build your own lightweight pluggable portal applications
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Interested in building small bits of browser-based functionality for public or internal consumption? Portlets could be the answer. Portal Zone blogger Navaneeth Krishnan discusses the qualities that define a portlet application, then walks you through a short development example that will get you started with the new Portlet 2.0 spec. Level: Beginner
The Java Portlet API enables developers to create reusable Web components that can be deployed on a wide variety of Java-based portals, including WebSphere, Liferay, eXo, and JBoss Enterprise Portal. In this article, you'll explore the recently finalized Portlets 2.0 specification (JSR 286), with a quick hands-on exercise in getting your first portlet application up and running.
Inter-portlet communication
Building a portal application typically involves getting multiple portlets to communicate with one another. This tricky process is the topic of two other articles in the JavaWorld Portlet Packet:
- "Inter-portlet communication with Dojo" explains how to build portlets to the Portlet 1.0 spec that can communicate via Ajax wizardry.
- "Inter-portlet communication in Portlet 2.0" explains the new standardized inter-portlet communication system built into the latest version of the spec.
Understanding portlets
A Web portal can be defined as a specialized Website that aggregates content and services from diverse sources and presents them in a single unified format to its users. The front pages of Yahoo and Google, which you can customize to present the information you're most interested in, are perfect examples of Web portals. Web portals are also commonly used within organizations, where they're known as corporate intranet portals. Typically, a Web portal is built using specialized software called a portal server.
The Portlet 2.0 specification, established by JSR-286, defines a standardized Web component called a portlet. In simple terms, a portlet is a piece of dynamic functionality that can be plugged into any compliant portal server. The portal server can run multiple portlets simultaneously to create a portal page. Figure 1 illustrates a simple portal page.
Figure 1. Portlets running in a portal (click to enlarge)
The portal page aggregates output from multiple portlets, with each portlet's content being confined to its own section of the page, called a portlet window. The portal adds decorations and controls to those windows, which are used for the operations supported by the portal -- such as minimizing or maximizing the windows.
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Resources
- Download example1.war, which contains the Hello World portlet ready to deploy, and example1.zip, which contains the source code.
- Download the JBoss portlet container, bundled with Tomcat, to run the sample application.
- Learn more about portlets with these articles in the Portlet Packet:
- Also see "Introducing the Portlet Specification, Part 1" (Stefan Hepper and Stephan Hesmer, JavaWorld, August 2003) for a fuller introduction to Portlet 1.0 -- the earlier version of the Portlet spec.
- Author Navaneeth Krishnan blogs at the Portal Zone, where you'll find an in-depth tutorial on JSR 286.
- Portlets are defined by the JSR 286 specification and Apache Pluto is the JSR 286 reference implementation.
- The Portlet Developer Discussion Group is an excellent resource for portlet developers.
More from JavaWorld
- Visit JW's Enterprise Java research center for more articles about enterprise Java programming tools and concepts.
- JavaWorld's community platform is growing: Check out JW Blogs and the improved Java Q&A Forums.
- Also see Network World's IT Buyer's Guides: Side-by-side comparison of hundreds of products in over 70 categories.
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Really good one!!!By Anonymous on December 7, 2008, 11:17 pmReally good one!!!
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