Portal Properties and Portal-ext Properties in Liferay

Portal properties are configuration points from where we can change behavior / functionality of liferay portal.

admin.email.from.name=Test Test
default.admin.first.name=Test
default.admin.last.name=Test
liferay.home=C:/Liferay Developer Studio 1.5/resources/liferay-portal-6.1.10-ee-ga1
[email protected]
company.default.name=Liferay
[email protected]
company.default.locale=en_US
setup.wizard.enabled=false
default.admin.screen.name=test

Liferay defines few more portal properties in portal.properties file. This file is located in <>/tomcat-7.0.25/webapps/ROOT/WEB-INF/lib/portal-impl.jar. We can override these properties (defined in portal.properties) from portal-ext.properties file.

portal-ext.properties file needs to be created manually and can be placed at following places

On server startup, Liferay reads portal properties from portal.properties file followed by portal-ext.properties file defined at location-1 then from location-2. Finally, it reads from portal-setup-wizard.properties file.

This means, 

• Any property defined in portal.properties file, can be overridden in portal-ext.properties defined at location-1.
• Any property defined in portal-ext.properties file at location-1, can be overridden in portal-ext.properties defined at location-2.

We can either override existing properties and / or can define new properties  in portal-ext.properties file.

Portal properties

Let’s see this in action.

Follow blog to configure Liferay source in eclipse / Liferay Developer Studio.
Once Liferay source is imported, press Ctrl+Shift+R and type portal.properties file as per below screenshot.

Click on the Open button and search for company.default.name property. It has the following value

company.default.name=Liferay

we will override this property from portal-ext.properties file.  Create portal-ext.properties at <<Liferay-Tomcat-Bundle>> folder as per below screenshot. 

Add following content to it.

company.default.web.id=abc.com
test.property=Abc Corporation

Here we are overriding existing property company.default.web.id and added new (custom)property test.property with value Abc Corporation.

Create one more fie with same name (portal-ext.properties) at <>/tomcat-7.0.27/webapps/ROOT/WEB-INF/classes path and add following content to it.

company.default.web.id=pqr.com
test.property=Pqr Ltd

portal-ext.properties file placed at <>/tomcat-7.0.27/webapps/ROOT/WEB-INF/classes will be read last and hence it overrides all properties defined in portal.properties and portal-ext.propeties (defined at <<Liferay-Tomcat-Bundle>> folder).

We will read these properties from Portlet. Follow my previous blog to create Liferay MVC portlet. Give its name as ‘portal-properties-check‘ and ‘-portlet‘ will be appended by Liferay at the end.

I gave Portlet class as ‘com.opensource.techblog.portlet.PortletPropTestPortlet‘. It will look like as per below screenshot

Add following content to portlet class

@Override
 public void render(RenderRequest request, RenderResponse response)
   throws PortletException, IOException {
  String newProp = PropsUtil.get("test.property");
  String existingProp = PropsUtil.get("company.default.web.id");
  
  request.setAttribute("newProp", newProp);
  request.setAttribute("existingProp", existingProp);
  super.render(request, response);
 }

Explanation:-

• We have an override render method that will be called when this portlet gets rendered on Liferay page.
• In this method, we are reading properties defined in portal.porperties (or portal-ext.properties) by util class called PropsUtil.get() method. We are passing Key of property. This method will return value (in form of ‘String‘ if present) or null if the property is not defined.
• We are setting properties value in request attribute which will access it in view.jsp

open view.jsp and add the following code in it.

<%@ taglib uri="http://java.sun.com/portlet_2_0" prefix="portlet" %>

Existing Property is <b>${existingProp}</b>
New Property is <b>${newProp}</b>

Explanation:-

• In view.jsp file, we are showing the value of properties by EL.