Monday, 4 June 2012

Liferay Development

Nilang Patel Monday, June 04, 2012 , Liferay Administration , Liferay Development , Liferay SDK , No comments :
Liferay provides all basic portal functionality + more than 60 out of the box (ready to use) portlets which we can directly use without writing single line of code.
In case if we need custom functionality, we can use Liferay SDK (Software Development Kit) to create following type of plugins


  • Portlet
  • Hook
  • Theme
  • Layout Templates
  • Web Modules
  • Ext
Except EXT plugin all other plugins are hot deployable (can be installed without restarting the server). Below is the brief about each type of plugins

1) Portlet :- its web component just like servlet, provide specific functionality. It  is rendered small portion of page to form complete composite web page.

2) Hook :- This plugin is used to override mainly JSPs of portal source/out of the box portlets. Hook can be useful when we need just small amount of code (mainly JSPs) change. Its also useful to define properties. There are few exceptional cases where we can use hook to customize java code (e.g. login pre and post hook)

3)Theme :- As its name suggest, it provide look and feel of the site. Liferay portlal comes with defaul theme called classic. With the help of Liferay SDK, we can create our own theme and for each theme we can define various color scheme.

4)Layout Templates:- this plugin will be used to define various layouts of the pages.

5)Web Modules :- This plugins are of type web application that will be integrated to Liferay like Enterprise Service Bus, Search Engine web application.

6)EXT:- If we want to customize specific behavior of liferay portal then EXT can be useful. This type of plugin is not hot deployable, means after deploying EXT, we need to restart server.

I would recommend looking at index page 'A Complete Liferay Guide' to browse all topics about liferay.

What is Liferay Portal

Nilang Patel Monday, June 04, 2012 Liferay Administration No comments :

I would recommend looking at index page 'A Complete Liferay Guide'

In simple term Liferay Portal 
  • made easy to create gadgets,portlets,pages,themes.
  • is implementation of portal specification (including JSR 168 and 286).
  • is web platform through which we can build business solutions.
  • provides collaborative tools.
  • having 60+ out of the box (Ready to use) portlets.
  • provides role based content management (JSR 170 compatible).
  • provides multilingual support.

 and lot more ...... for more info please visit http://www.liferay.com/products/what-is-a-portal/web-platform

 I would recommend looking at index page 'A Complete Liferay Guide'

Friday, 1 June 2012

What is portlet

Nilang Patel Friday, June 01, 2012 Liferay Administration No comments :

I would recommend looking at index page 'A Complete Liferay Guide' to browse all topics about liferay.
Portlet in General
  • Portlet is a web component. Combine with other portlets, they form complete comprehensive web page.
  • In simple term, we can say that a portlet is independent web application which render in some part of web page.
  • Just like other web applications, it takes request (HTTP or HTTPS) and produces response.
  • Content rendered by Portlet is just part of whole page.
  • Many portlet together form a page so that multiple functionality will be available to same page. Thus how a Portal is developed.
Java Portlet
  • Following two Java Specification Request (JSR) defined for Portlet in Java
    • JSR-168 ( or Portlet 1.0 Specification )
      • This specification was defined to show aggregate content of different component.
    • JSR-286 ( or Portlet 2.0 Specification )
      • This specification was added on top of JSR-168 with new features added.
      • Key features to this specification are as below
        • Inter Portlet Communication (IPC)
        • Ajax support
        • Serving resource like images, pdf etc.
        • Allow changing header like cookies, meta tags etc
        • Annotation support 
        • Improved web framework integration
        • Portlet managed modes
      • Its super set of JSR-168.
  • These specification describes life cycle and characteristics of portlets.
  • To know more about the Portlet specification refer following links
    • Portlet Specification-Part 1
    • Portlet Specification-Part 2
Advantage of using Java Portlet
  • Portability :- 
    • Just like Servlet, Portlet written based on these specification can be deployed and executed on any compatible Portlet container. Thus Portlets are portable across portal containers.
  • Maintenance :- 
    • The underlying API and architecture will not change across the compatible portlet container.
  • Easy to Learn :-
    • Portal API is available as a part of JSR Docs, and it will be consistent across portal container. 
I would recommend looking at index page 'A Complete Liferay Guide' to browse all topics about liferay.
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