Rima Patel Sriganesh Technology Evangelist Sun Microsystems, Inc.

What are Portlets and How Do You Implement Them? Rima Patel Sriganesh Technology Evangelist Sun Microsystems, Inc.

Obectives • Introduce Portlet components • Provide information on various Portlet standards efforts • Provide a basic how-to understanding about implementing Portlet components

Agenda • Introduction to Portals and Portlets • Portlet Standards • JSR 168 • Portlet Specification • WSRP • Web Services for Remote Portals • Sample implemenation of a HelloWorld Portlet • Resources

Portals • Portals are becoming a platform for • Integration • Aggregation • Deliveryof applications and content through different channels and devices • Portals are common entry point for accessing applications and content

Portal Functions • Typical portal functions • Authentication and Authorization • Personalization • Customization • Searching • User relationship management • Registration, Profile management, etc. • Single sign-on • Etc.

Portal example

Portlets • Portals comprises of components called Portlets • Alike web components such as Servlets with special properties • Each Portlet produces a markup fragment • that is combined with markup generated by other portlets, all within a portal page markup • Designed to be aggregatable in larger context of a portal page

Portlet Context • Managed by host Portal • Provides information pertaining to • User profile • Individual portlet instance data • Portlet settings • UI related • Portlet Window State (Min, Max, etc.) • Portlet Modes (View, edit, configuration, help, etc.) • Portlet Events (actions)

Portlet example If clicked on Edit, Portlet would generate appropriate EVENT and Perform appropriate ACTION UI related settings * Portlet is currently in View mode * Many such portlet components are invoked in a single request for a Portal page

Positioning of Portlet • An important Service Delivery architectural component • Other Service Delivery architectural components • Java Server Pages (JSPTM) • Application Frameworks • Iplanet JATO/JSF (JSR 127) • Struts, etc.

JSR 168 Portlet Specification • Aims towards • Enabling interoperability between Portals and Portlets • Defining a set of APIs for addressing different areas of Portal computing • Aggregation • Personalization • Presentation • Security • Based on JavaTM Servlet API

Local Portlet Local Portlet Local Portlet JSR 168 Portlet Invocation Model Portal Page Servlet EJBs Action Connectors J2EE APIs Web Services Portlet API Servlet API Portlet Container Portlet Context Registries, Directories, Security and Content Management Infrastructure

Specification Areas • JSR 168 will provide lifecycle and semantics for • Portlets • Deployment Descriptor • Developer APIs • Vendor Extension APIs for security, user customization and layout management

States defined • JSR 168 defines a minimum set of possible states for a portlet • Normal • Minimized • Maximized

Design Goals • JSR 168 will try to achieve following design goals • Client agnostic • Support for multiple types of clients (multi-device) • Simple Portlet API • Support for Localization and Internationalization

Design Goals (Contd.) • Hot deployment and re-deployment of Portal applications • Declarative security (similar to that of Servlet and EJBTM) • Architected to support remote execution of Portlets

Support for Portlet Context • JSR 168 would provide APIs so that Portlets can perform contextual tasks • Accessing user profile information for the current user • Participation in portal window and action event model • Accessing web client information • Sharing information with other Portlets • Storing/retrieving per-user/per-instance Portlet data persistently

URL Rewriting Support • JSR 168 will support URL Rewriting mechanism so that • Links within a Portlet would be able to trigger actions • without requiring knowledge of how URLs are structured in a particular web application

Portlet Deployment • Portlets would be grouped in a Portal application • by bundling them in a single WAR • with a Portlet deployment descriptor • Portlet API will provide means for sharing data among portlets of the same Portal application

Support for Remote Portlets • JSR 168 would allow support for remote Portlet execution • Will not address transport protocol for remote execution of Portlets leaving specifics to Portal implementations • For e.g. A static Portlet proxy could be used to invoke a remote Portlet • OR can rely on WSRP mechanisms for invoking remote Portlets

Goals for consideration • JSR 167 Expert Group will decide whether to support specialized Portlet implementations for • Syndication (based on RSS) • Web Services access • Credential mapping service (somewhat akin to SSO)

Schedule and other information • Release of 1.0 specification expected in in December, 2002 • Proposed package namespace javax.servlet.portlet • An extension to J2EETM 1.4 platform

WSRP • Aimed towards defining a protocol for • Enabling interactive, user-facing web services to be easily plugged into standards compliant portals • Making internet a marketplace of visual web services, ready to be integrated into portals • Effort began in January 2002 • WSRP Specification 1.0 and compliance Test Kit in December 2002

Portal Architecture and WSRP PortalServer LocalPortlets Clients HTML WML VoiceXML... HTTP Portlet API GenericPortletProxies OtherPortals RemotePortlets WSRP WSRP Pubish/Find Web Services (SOAP) UDDI Registry

WSRP Service Lifecycle UDDIRegistry WSRP Services Register Bind Find Portal Client Request

WSRP Plug-n-Play

Scope • WSRP will define • A WSDL interface description for invocation of WSRP services • Ways to Publish, Find and Bind WSRP services and their metadata • Markup fragment rules for markup emitted by WSRP services • Applicable Security mechanisms, Billing mechanisms, etc.

Business Scenarios supported • Content/Application Provider providing WSRP Service • Portal publishing Portlets as WSRP Services • Provision of syndicated Content/Billing/Mobility services via WSRP • Multimedia portals • Enterprise Application services

ScenarioContent/Application provider providing WSRP service Client • Portals can aggregate presentation from many WSRP services • WSRP Services can be portal context aware • User profile from portal • Desired locale and markup-type • User's device constraints • UI WSRP Consumer Portal Mark-up fragment transferred via SOAP WSRP Producer

ScenarioPortals publishing Portlets as WSRP Service WSRP Producer Multiple clients WSRP Consumer • Admin of Publishing portal publishes portlet as WSRP service to a UDDI registry • Admin of Intermediary portal finds WSRP service through a UDDI browser and binds to it • Clients of Intermediary portal select remote portlets like any local portlet to put on their page Portlet ServerPortal WSRPWrapper Portal Portlet Portlet Intermediary Portal Publishing Portal

Interaction between Portal and WSRP WSRP Consumer WSRP Producer User Allocate new Instance Create Portlet Instance Adds Portlet I Generate Markup Get Portlet Markup Views Portlet I A I S Action Handling Perform Portlet Action Clicks Portlet S I A A I S Destroy Instance Destroy Portlet Instance Removes Portlet I I

WSRP/WSIA Common Interfaces • Share common interfaces for • Basic life-cycle operations • Basic operations for processing actions and getting markup

WSRP Interfaces • Define interfaces for • Advanced life-cycle operations • Advanced operations for processing actions/getting markup pertaining to • User profile information contained in requests • Device information contained in requests • Locale information contained in requests

WSRP Protocol • Defines protocol of interaction between portal and services • Caching considerations • Contract for handling instances and sessions • Order in which to invoke operations

WSRP Publish / Find / Bind / Metadata • Defines method used to publish/find services to and from UDDI • Defines metadata to be provided when publishing service • Name, Titles, Descriptions • Supported Markups/Locales • Caching hints

WSRP Markup Fragment Rules/Styles • Define valid markup fragments for • XHTML/HTML • WML/cHTML/VoiceXML (Second prirority) • Define URL Rewriting

WSRP and Security, Identity, Single Sign-On (SSO) • Define how security mechanisms can be employed with WSRP • Define how identity is to be provided by consumers to producers • Define how SSO via a consumer to multiple producers may be achieved

HelloWorldPortlet ExampleSample Implementation uses JetSpeed Importorg.apache.jetspeed.portal.portlets.AbstractPortlet;... public class HelloWorldPortlet extends AbstractPortlet{ public ConcreteElement getContent (RunData objRunData) { return (new StringElement ("Hello World!!") }} * ConcreteElement is an Apache ECS (Element Construction Set, an object based markup generator) class * RunData -> Turbine Class. Would be used later. Source: www.bluesunrise.com

HelloWorldPortlet RegistrationTo JetSpeed Portlets Registry <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><registry> <portlet-entry name="HelloWorld" hidden="false" type="instance" application="false"> <meta-info> <title>HelloWorld</title> <description> Portlet How To Example 1 – Hello World </description></meta-info> <classname>HelloWorldPortlet</classname> <media-type ref="html"/> </portlet-entry></registry> Source: www.bluesunrise.com

Customize portal page to add HelloWorldPortlet Source: www.bluesunrise.com

Personalizing Hello! public class HelloWorldPortlet extends AbstractPortlet{ public ConcreteElement getContent (RunData objRunData) { StringBuffer objStringBuffer = new StringBuffer(); objStringBuffer.append("Hello "); String sName = objRunData.getUser(). getFirstName(); objStringBuffer.append (sName + "!"); return (new StringElement (objStringBuffer.toString()); }} Source: www.bluesunrise.com

Soft-coding Personalized Hello! public class NewsPortlet extends AbstractPortlet{ public ConcreteElement getContent (RunData objRunData) { ... objStringBuffer.append(getPortletConfig(). getInitParameter ("greeting")); ... }} Configure parameters for this Portlet in Jetspeed Configuration file (jetspeed-config.jcfg) <portlet-entry ....> <classname>HelloWorldPortlet</classname> <parameter name="greeting" value = "Hello, " /> ...</portlet-entry> Source: www.bluesunrise.com

RunData and User • RunData object provides access to • Servlet Request object • Other session context information • Security, Turbine Actions, Cookies, Servlet Parameters (parsed), Current user (via getUser() as shown), etc. • User object is used to access typical user information • Name, contact information, password, login information, etc.

Resources • JSR 168http://www.jcp.org/jsr/detail/168.jsp • SunTM ONE Portal Serverhttp://wwws.sun.com/software/products/portal_srvr/home_portal.html • WSRP and WSIA @ OASIShttp://www.oasis-open.org/committees/wsrp/http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/wsia/ • WSRP and WSIA @ XML Cover Pageshttp://xml.coverpages.org/wsrp.htmlhttp://xml.coverpages.org/wscm.html

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Rima Patel Sriganesh rima.patel@sun.com http://www.sun.com/developers/evangcentral

Rima Patel Sriganesh Technology Evangelist Sun Microsystems, Inc.