
	Portal Guide

About This Guide

PART I Portal Concepts

1 About Portal Applications

About the Portal subsystem

About Custom Web applications

Portal controller servlet

Resource servlet

Presentation Manager

Pieces of a portal application

2 Writing the Presentation Layer for the Application

About the presentation layer

Writing JSP pages

Using the Director tag libraries in a JSP page

Writing custom servlets

Using the Director API in a servlet

Writing PID pages

Building PID pages that contain HTML

Building PID pages that contain XML

Adding user and group pages

3 Working with Portal Layouts

About portal layouts

Layout descriptor file

Layout definition file

XML format

XHTML format

Working with user pages

Working with group pages

Working with the layout API

4 Working with Portal Themes

About themes

Theme descriptor file

Theme CSS file

Creating a custom theme.css file

About the standard Director classes

Theme image files

Theme preview image file

Theme thumbnail image file

Theme option image files

Creating pages that are theme-enabled

Including the CSS link in a JSP page

Including the CSS link in a PID page

Creating components that are theme-enabled

How the default decorator class renders a component

How the CSS file changes the appearance of a component

Working with the theme API

5 Working with Portal Decorators

About portal decorators

Using the default decorator for the Portal subsystem

Implementing a component-level decorator

Implementing a decorator service

6 Working with Portal Options

About portal options

Portal option links

Modes and states

Portal option descriptor file

Portal option image files

Specifying options for components

Reusing a portal option

Overriding property settings for a portal option

Specifying a component-specific option

Specifying roles for component options

Implementing a custom action handler service

Working with the portal option API

PART II Component Concepts

7 Developing Components

About components

Component implementation

About component descriptors

Displaying a component

Generating component content

Setting the content type

Generating HTML content

Generating XML content

Rendering XML content

Component styles and portal styles

User agents and device profiles

Setting default component styles

Localizing the user interface

Preparing your XSL

Preparing your XML

Setting component lifetime

Responding to users

Writing a portal-lifetime component

Adding support for multiple component instances

Caching component data

How to cache retrieved data

Alternatives to the managed cache

Setting up interactions between components

Writing the form to submit values to the component

Saving parameter values in processRequest()

Using the saved parameters in getComponentData()

8 Developing Components to Access Web Services

Basics

Learning about the Web Service Wizard

Steps for developing a consumer component

Preparing to generate

Providing a WSDL file

Example: WSDL file for MyWeather Web Service

Generating the component files

Examining the generated files

Example: generated component files for MyWeather Web Service

Editing the generated files

Editing the xxx_COMPONENT.java file

Editing the xxx_COMPONENT.xml file

Using the generated files

Running your application

9 Tips and Techniques for Components

Enhancing performance

Good coding practices

10 Developing a Wireless Application

About device transcoding

Device-specific pagination

Device-specific rendering

Sample component

Creating a wireless-enabled component

Wireless-enabling an existing component

Creating a device transcoding data definition

About transcoding data definitions

Creating a reference file

Creating a data definition file

Editing a data definition file

Testing a data definition

Using the Wireless Layout Manager

Using the device profile editor

PART III Tools

11 Using the Custom Web Application

About the custom Web application

Starting the custom Web application

How the custom Web application works

Portal home page

New User page

12 Personalizing Your Portal

About the Portal Personalizer

Starting the Portal Personalizer

Working with user pages

Creating a user page

Modifying the page contents

Modifying the page layout

Displaying a user page

Setting the default user page

Deleting a user page

Working with group pages

Creating a group page

Modifying the page contents

Setting the current group page

Setting the theme for your portal

Customizing your portal

Customizing the Portal Personalizer

Customizing the Portal home page

13 Creating Custom Components

About the Portal Component Wizard

Using the Portal Component Wizard

Editing a component descriptor

14 Creating Custom Layouts

About the Portal Layout and Portal Layout Definition Wizards

Creating a layout descriptor

Creating an XML layout definition

15 Creating Custom Themes

About the Portal Themes Wizard

Creating a portal theme file

Creating the theme CSS file

16 Creating Custom Options

About the Portal Options wizard

Creating a portal option file

17 Using the Portal Section of the PAC

About the Portal section of the PAC

General Configuration

PART IV Reference

18 Portal Tag Library

fireComponentProcessRequest

getCompList

getObjectInCache

getObjectInSessionCache

putObjectInSessionCache

removeObjectFromCache

sourceXML

19 Portal Replacement Strings

About replacement strings

Where they can be used

What they are

$COMP_PATH$

$COMPONENT_ID$

$COMPONENT_INSTANCE_ID$

$ENCODED_REQUEST_URL$

$PORTAL_SERVLET_PATH$

$PORTAL_SERVLET_URL$

$PORTAL_USERPAGE_NAME$


	Portal Guide

Contents