Extreme Portal

In this New version of Portal,You will see how WebSphere Portal helps you achieve a service-oriented architecture (SOA) environment and excellent AJAX implementation and many more.

Stefan Hepper and team members has written an excellent article.

click here for detail.

Here is a latest portlet framework based on MVC which includes Spring technology.

see details of the framework Spring Portlet MVC

It has always been a topic of discussion about file uploading in portlet specially with JPDK portlet on Oracle Portal server.

I also faced some technical challenges while working with this but now come up with a solution and wants to share with portal world using this article.

You will find numerous post on OTN (Oracle Technology Network) regarding File upload in Portlet technology.
So finally I though about why not to write an article on my blog for the same.

And now...Here we go.......

1. Create a portlet application from your JDeveloper and just write a new servlet into any of your package. This servlet will be doing the actual file uploading functionality.

2. Make a entry for this servlet in your web.xml.

Sample code for the servlet entry in web.xml :-

<servlet>
<servlet-name>UploadFile</servlet-name>
<servlet-class>com.util.UploadServlet</servlet-class>
</servlet>
<servlet-mapping>
<servlet-name>UploadFile</servlet-name>
<url-pattern>FileUploadServlet</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>

3. Let us say you will be having two JSP one is MyProfile.jsp and other is FileUpload.jsp. The FileUpload.jsp will be opened in a pop up window using window.open(<pass required parameters> ) once you click on a link from MyProfile.jsp.

(Note:- off course you might be having other Business and DB related classes and some other JSP also)

4. In the pop up window OR FileUpload.jsp , use the following as your form tag entry

<form method="post" action="<%=request.getContextPath()%>/FileUploadServlet" name="fileuploadform" enctype="multipart/form-data">

5. Once done with development and configuration , deploy your portlet application from the JDeveloper.

You can use application server connection from within your JDeveloper for deployment of your Portlet Application.

Let us understand complete scenario in a more practical way

Let us say you are creating a Matrimonial Portlet , where user will be entering his profile detail and will also upload his photograph.

Matrimonial Portlet must be having these minimum files as follows:

Two Java files , MatrimonialPortlet.java , FileUploadServlet.java and Two JSP files , UserProfile.jsp and FileUpload.jsp.

Again , some other files might be there for your DB and Business related operations.

Now the Functional approach will be like this

1. From MatrimonialPortlet.java , the UserProfile.jsp will be rendered. In this jsp user will enter his profile detail and at the end he will upload his photograph.

2. It means some where (On some link )on this UserProfile.jsp , you will call window.open(<pass required parameters> ) , which will result in opening FileUpload.jsp in a pop up window and this is the jsp where user will upload his photograph.

3. Once the photograph is uploaded , pop up window will be closed and user will come back to UserProfile.jsp and finally press the submit button for submitting his complete profile detail.

I hope , this article will help you to understand about File Uploading in JPDK portlet for Oracle Portal Server.

You can have a look on the thread called File Upload function in Portlet on OTN for the same.

Feel free to post your comment if you have any queries.

Oracle is going to launch a new Portal Product called

Oracle Workplace Suite.

First Public Draft for Portlet 2.0 Specification has been released.

Portlet 2.0 Specification Public Review Draft

Download JSR 286 Spec

Portlet 2.0 Spec ,TSS thread

Yeah ...it's easy now to create Portles with AJAX.

Here is good start for creating JSR 168 Portlets with AJAX.

Oracle has written a very good white paper for AJAX Portlet.

The Expert Group is also working on AJAX in Portlets in the coming JSR 286 Portlet Specification.

Let's have a look for Creating Portlets with AJAX.

Yeah, The JSR 286 is the Portlet Specification V 2.0.

Stefan Hepper, specification lead - JSR 286 presented an excellent thems of the coming JSR 286 ,which are summarized below

1:- Sharing of session data beyond the current portlet application.
2:- Sharing of render parameters across portlets
3:- Allows wiring of portlets at runtime
4:- Allow portlets to share session related data across web application boundaries.
5:-Support of browser back/forward button.
6:-write JSR 286 portlets and publish them as WSRP services.
7:-AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript technology and XML) support is vendor specific.

and many more..

Check out here for complete detail of JSR 286.
JSR 286 , Portlet Specification V 2.0.

Personalization and Customization feature of Portal Server

Here we will talk about what exactly the personalization and customization feature provided by the portal server and what exactly the difference between them.

As per the JSR168 spec
A Portal server may have sophisticated Personalization feature to provide customize content to the users.

A Portal Administrator does personalization whereas the end user does customization.

Let us understand this concept with a practical scenario.

Let us say there are 3 portlets, Portlet P1, P2 and P3.
And there are two portal users say user1 and user2.

Portal Administrator assigns access of portlets to users as below
User1 can access Portlet P1 and P2
User2 can access Portlet P2 and P3

It means whenever user1 logs into the portal , he/she can view only portlet P1 and P2 and if user2 logs in he/she can view portlet P2 and P3.

So we can say that portlet P2 can be seen by user1 and user2 as well.
Once added to a portal page these users can customize ( i.e. portlet preferences or portlet data ) these portlets.

The point to be noted here is:-Content generated by portlet P2 may vary for User1 and User2 , because user1 and user2 can customize Portlet P2 as per their requirement which in turn results for generating different output by the portlet P2.

A portal user can always customize portlets if and only if the portal administrator has assigned proper righs to him/her.

Portal:-A portal is a web based application which aggregates the portlet applications in a presentable format. Portal provides Personalization, Single Sign On and content aggregation from different sources.
A portal typically allows users to customize their presentation, including what portlet applications to display on a portal page.
Portal server implementations include a component receiving requests and aggregating personalized content for the respective user.
Typical portal server content

Portlets:-
A Portlet is a web based java component managed by portlet container much the same way as servlet is managed by the servlet container.
But portlets have additional, special properties that allow them to easily plug into and run in enclosing web applications like portals.
Portlet generates a fragment of markup that user can see from his or her browser.
User issues a request against a portlet from the portal page which in turn forwards this request to portlet container which manages portlet’s life cycle and then returns response to the portal and the portal which is finally responsible for aggregating the content produced by the portlets.
Portlets are not directly tied to a particular URL , instead they constructs URL using the methods like createActionURL() and createRenderURL().
Portlet Container:-:
As of now I have used the term Portlet Container so many times , but now it Is time to learn about what exactly portlet container is?
Portlet container sits between Portal and its portlets.
Portlet Container is responsible for running the portlets and provides them with required runtime environment. Portlet Life cycle is managed by the Portlet container.
Basic portal architecture

An Example which will explain the roles played by the above players(Portal,Portlet- Container,Portlet).
User issues a request for a particular portlet on a portal page using any client device such as browse or web enabled phone.
This request goes to portal which examines the portlet to be executed from list of portlets to satisfy the request.
Here the portal invokes the portlet through portlet Container which in turn runs the requested portlet and returns response to the portal.Portal is then responsible for generating fragment which is to be shown on portal page back the Client.