Author: julien(a)jboss.com Date: 2007-06-15 08:02:00 -0400 (Fri, 15 Jun 2007) New Revision: 7435 Removed: docs/trunk/referenceGuide/en/modules/contentIntegration.xml Log: renaming contentIntegration to contentintegration Deleted: docs/trunk/referenceGuide/en/modules/contentIntegration.xml =================================================================== --- docs/trunk/referenceGuide/en/modules/contentIntegration.xml 2007-06-15 10:26:05 UTC (rev 7434) +++ docs/trunk/referenceGuide/en/modules/contentIntegration.xml 2007-06-15 12:02:00 UTC (rev 7435) @@ -1,451 +0,0 @@ -<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> -<chapter id="contentIntegration"> - <chapterinfo> - <author> - <firstname>Julien</firstname> - <surname>Viet</surname> - <email>julien @ jboss dot com</email> - </author> - </chapterinfo> - <title>Content Integration</title> - <para>Since JBoss Portal 2.6 it is possible to provide an easy integration of content within the portal. Up to the 2.4 version - content integration had to be done by configuring a portlet to show some content from an URI and then place that - portlet on a page. The new content integration capabilities allows to directly configure a page window with the content URI - removing the need to configure a portlet for that purpose.</para> - <note>We do not advocate to avoid the usage portlet preferences, we rather advocate that content configuration managed at the portal level - simplifies the configuration: it helps to make content a first class citizen of the portal instead of having an intermediary - portlet that holds the content for the portal. The portlet preferences can still be used to configure how content is displayed - to the user.</note> - <mediaobject> - <imageobject> - <imagedata align="center" fileref="images/content/before.png" format="png"/> - </imageobject> - <caption> - <para>The portal uses portlets to configure content</para> - </caption> - </mediaobject> - <mediaobject> - <imageobject> - <imagedata align="center" fileref="images/content/after.png" format="png"/> - </imageobject> - <caption> - <para>The portal references directly the content and use portlet to interact with content</para> - </caption> - </mediaobject> - <sect1> - <title>Window content</title> - <para>The content of a window is defined by - <itemizedlist> - <listitem>The content URI which is the resource that the window is pointing to. It is an arbitrary string that - the portal cannot interpret and is left up to the content provider to interpret.</listitem> - <listitem>The window content type which defines how the portal interpret the window content - <itemizedlist> - <listitem>The default content type is for portlets and has the value <emphasis>portlet</emphasis>. For that - content type, the content URI is the portlet instance id.</listitem> - <listitem>The CMS content type allows to integrate content from the CMS at the page and it has the value - <emphasis>cms</emphasis>. For that content type, the content URI is the CMS file path.</listitem> - </itemizedlist> - </listitem> - <listitem>The content parameters which is a set of additional key/value string pairs holding state that is interpreted - by the content provider.</listitem> - </itemizedlist> - </para> - <para>At runtime when the portal needs to render a window it delegates the production of markup to a content provider. - The portal comes with a preconfigured set of providers which handles the portlet and the cms content types. The most - natural way to plug a content provider in the portal is to use a JSR 168 Portlet. Based on a few carefully chosen conventions - it is possible to provide an efficient content integration with the benefit of using standards and without requiring - the usage of a proprietary API.</para> - </sect1> - <sect1> - <title>Content customization</title> - <para>Content providers must be able to allow the user or administrator to chose content from the external resource - it integrates in the portal in order to properly configure a portal window. A few interactions between the portal, the content - provider and the portal user are necessary to achieve that goal. Here again it is possible to provide content - customization using a JSR 168 Portlet. For that purpose two special portlet modes called - <emphasis>edit_content</emphasis> and <emphasis>select_content</emphasis> has been introduced. It signals to the portlet - that it is selecting or editing the content portion of the state of a portlet. <emphasis>select_content</emphasis> is - used to select a new content to put in a window while <emphasis>edit_content</emphasis> is used to modify the previously - defined content, often the two modes will display the same thing. The traditional edit mode is not used because the edit mode - is more targetted to configure how the portlet show content to the end user rather than what content it shows.</para> - <imageobject> - <imagedata align="center" fileref="images/content/cms.png" format="png"/> - </imageobject> - <caption>Example of content customization - CMS Portlet</caption> - </sect1> - <sect1> - <title>Content Driven Portlet</title> - <para>Portlet components are used to integrate content into the portal. It relies on a few conventions which allow - the portal and the portlet to communicate. - </para> - <sect2> - <title>Displaying content</title> - <para>At runtime the portal will call the portlet with the view mode when it displays content. It will send to the - portlet the information about the content to display using the render parameters. Therefore the portlet has - just to read the render parameters and use them to properly display the content in the portlet. The render parameters - values are the key/value pairs that forms the content properties and the resource URI is found under the <emphasis>uri</emphasis> - parameter name.</para> - </sect2> - <sect2> - <title>Configuring content</title> - <para>As explained before, the portal will call the portlet using the <emphasis>edit_content</emphasis> mode. - In that mode the portlet and the portal will communicate using either action or render parameters. We have two use cases - which are: - <itemizedlist> - <listitem>The portal needs to configure a new content item for a new window. In that use case the portal will not send special - render parameters to the portlet and the initial set of render parameters will be empty. The portlet can - then use render parameters in order to provide navigation in the content repository. For example the portlet - can navigate the CMS tree and store the current CMS path in the render parameters. Whenever the portlet has decided - to tell the portal that content has been selected by the user it needs to use an action URL with a special set of - parameters: - <itemizedlist> - <listitem><emphasis>content.action.select</emphasis> equals to any value</listitem> - <listitem><emphasis>content.uri</emphasis> equals to the content URI</listitem> - <listitem><emphasis>content.param.</emphasis> used as prefix to configure content parameters</listitem> - </itemizedlist> - </listitem> - <listitem>The second use case happens when the portal needs to edit existing content. In such situation - everything works as explained before except that the initial set of render parameters of the portlet - will be prepopulated with the content uri URI and parameters.</listitem> - </itemizedlist> - </para> - </sect2> - <sect2> - <title>Step by step example of a content driven portlet</title> - <para></para> - <sect3> - <title>The Portlet skeleton</title> - <para>Here is the base skeleton of the content portlet. The FSContentDrivenPortlet shows the files which are - in the war file in which the portlet is deployed. The arbitrary name <emphasis>filesystem</emphasis> - will be the content type interpreted by the portlet. - </para> - <programlisting><![CDATA[ -public class FSContentDrivenPortlet extends GenericPortlet -{ - - /** The edit_content mode. */ - public static final PortletMode EDIT_CONTENT_MODE = new PortletMode("edit_content"); - - /** The select_content mode. */ - public static final PortletMode SELECT_CONTENT_MODE = new PortletMode("select_content"); - - ... - -} -]]></programlisting> - </sect3> - <sect3> - <title>Overriding the dispatch method</title> - <para>First the <emphasis>doDispatch(RenderRequest req, RenderResponse resp)</emphasis> is overriden in order - to branch the requeset flow to a method that will take care of displaying the editor.</para> - <programlisting><![CDATA[ -protected void doDispatch(RenderRequest req, RenderResponse resp) - throws PortletException, PortletSecurityException, IOException -{ - if (EDIT_CONTENT_MODE.equals(req.getPortletMode()) || SELECT_CONTENT_MODE.equals(req.getPortletMode())) - { - doEditContent(req, resp); - } - else - { - super.doDispatch(req, resp); - } -} -]]></programlisting> - </sect3> - <sect3> - <title>Utilities methods</title> - <para>The portlet also needs a few utilities methods which take care of converting content URI to a file - back and forth. There is also an implementation of a file filter that keep only text files and avoid the - WEB-INF directory of the war file for security reasons.</para> - <programlisting><![CDATA[ -protected File getFile(String contentURI) throws IOException -{ - String realPath = getPortletContext().getRealPath(contentURI); - if (realPath == null) - { - throw new IOException("Cannot access war file content"); - } - File file = new File(realPath); - if (!file.exists()) - { - throw new IOException("File " + contentURI + " does not exist"); - } - return file; -} -]]></programlisting> - <programlisting><![CDATA[ - protected String getContentURI(File file) throws IOException - { - String rootPath = getPortletContext().getRealPath("/"); - if (rootPath == null) - { - throw new IOException("Cannot access war file content"); - } - - // Make it canonical - rootPath = new File(rootPath).getCanonicalPath(); - - // Get the portion of the path that is significant for us - String filePath = file.getCanonicalPath(); - return filePath.length() >= - rootPath.length() ? filePath.substring(rootPath.length()) : null; - } -]]></programlisting> - <programlisting><![CDATA[ - private final FileFilter filter = new FileFilter() - { - public boolean accept(File file) - { - String name = file.getName(); - if (file.isDirectory()) - { - return !"WEB-INF".equals(name); - } - else if (file.isFile()) - { - return name.endsWith(".txt"); - } - else - { - return false; - } - } - }; -]]></programlisting> - </sect3> - <sect3> - <title>The editor</title> - <para>The editor is probably the longest part of the portlet. It tries to stay simple though and goes directly - to the point.</para> - <imageobject> - <imagedata align="center" fileref="images/content/fs1.png" format="png"/> - </imageobject> - <caption>Content editor of FSContentDrivenPortlet in action</caption> - <programlisting><![CDATA[ -protected void doEditContent(RenderRequest req, RenderResponse resp) - throws PortletException, PortletSecurityException, IOException -{ - // Get the uri value optionally provided by the portal - String uri = req.getParameter("content.uri"); - - // Get the working directory directory - File workingDir; - if (uri != null) - { - workingDir = getFile(uri).getParentFile(); - } - else - { - // Otherwise try to get the current directory we are browsing, - // if no current dir exist we use the root - String currentDir = req.getParameter("current_dir"); - if (currentDir == null) - { - currentDir = "/"; - } - workingDir = getFile(currentDir); - } - - // Get the parent path - String parentPath = getContentURI(workingDir.getParentFile()); - - // Get the children of the selected file, we use a filter - // to retain only text files and avoid WEB-INF dir - File[] children = workingDir.listFiles(filter); - - // Configure the response - resp.setContentType("text/html"); - PrintWriter writer = resp.getWriter(); - - // - writer.print("Directories:<br/>"); - writer.print("<ul>"); - PortletURL choseDirURL = resp.createRenderURL(); - if (parentPath != null) - { - choseDirURL.setParameter("current_dir", parentPath); - writer.print("<li><a href=\"" + choseDirURL + "\">..</a></li>"); - } - for (int i = 0;i < children.length;i++) - { - File child = children[i]; - if (child.isDirectory()) - { - choseDirURL.setParameter("current_dir", getContentURI(child)); - writer.print("<li><a href=\"" + choseDirURL + "\">" + child.getName() + - "</a></li>"); - } - } - writer.print("</ul><br/>"); - - // - writer.print("Files:<br/>"); - writer.print("<ul>"); - PortletURL selectFileURL = resp.createActionURL(); - selectFileURL.setParameter("content.action.select", "select"); - for (int i = 0;i < children.length;i++) - { - File child = children[i]; - if (child.isFile()) - { - selectFileURL.setParameter("content.uri", getContentURI(child)); - writer.print("<li><a href=\"" + selectFileURL + "\">" + child.getName() + - "</a></li>"); - } - } - writer.print("</ul><br/>"); - - // - writer.close(); -} -]]></programlisting> - </sect3> - <sect3> - <title>Viewing content at runtime</title> - <para>Last but not least the portlet needs to implement the <emphasis>doView(RenderRequest req, RenderResponse resp)</emphasis> - method in order to display the file that the portal window wants to show.</para> - <programlisting><![CDATA[ -protected void doView(RenderRequest req, RenderResponse resp) - throws PortletException, PortletSecurityException, IOException -{ - // Get the URI provided by the portal - String uri = req.getParameter("uri"); - - // Configure the response - resp.setContentType("text/html"); - PrintWriter writer = resp.getWriter(); - - // - if (uri == null) - { - writer.print("No selected file"); - } - else - { - File file = getFile(uri); - FileInputStream in = null; - try - { - in = new FileInputStream(file); - FileChannel channel = in.getChannel(); - byte[] bytes = new byte[(int)channel.size()]; - ByteBuffer buffer = ByteBuffer.wrap(bytes); - channel.read(buffer); - writer.write(new String(bytes, 0, bytes.length, "UTF8")); - } - catch (FileNotFoundException e) - { - writer.print("No such file " + uri); - getPortletContext().log("Cannot find file " + uri, e); - } - finally - { - if (in != null) - { - in.close(); - } - } - } - - // - writer.close(); -} -]]></programlisting> - </sect3> - <sect3> - <title>Hooking the portlet into the portal</title> - <imageobject> - <imagedata align="center" fileref="images/content/fs2.png" format="png"/> - </imageobject> - <caption>Management portlet with <emphasis>filesystem</emphasis> content type enabled</caption> - <para>Finally we need to make the portal aware of the fact that the portlet can edit and interpret content. For that - we need a few descriptors. The <emphasis>portlet.xml</emphasis> descriptor will define our portlet, the - <emphasis>portlet-instances.xml</emphasis> will create a single instance of our portlet. The - <emphasis>web.xml</emphasis> descriptor will contain a servlet context listener that will hook the content - type in the portal content type registry.</para> - <programlisting><![CDATA[ -<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> -<portlet-app - xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/portlet/portlet-app_1_0.xsd" - xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" - xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/portlet/portlet-app_1... - http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/portlet/portlet-app_1_0.xsd" - version="1.0"> - ... - <portlet> - <description>File System Content Driven Portlet</description> - <portlet-name>FSContentDrivenPortlet</portlet-name> - <display-name>File System Content Driven Portlet</display-name> - <portlet-class>org.jboss.portal.core.portlet.test.FSContentDrivenPortlet</portlet-class> - <supports> - <mime-type>text/html</mime-type> - </supports> - <portlet-info> - <title>File Portlet</title> - <keywords>sample,test</keywords> - </portlet-info> - </portlet> - ... -</portlet-app> -]]></programlisting> - <para>The portlet.xml descriptor</para> - <programlisting><![CDATA[ -<deployments> - ... - <deployment> - <instance> - <instance-id>FSContentDrivenPortletInstance</instance-id> - <portlet-ref>FSContentDrivenPortlet</portlet-ref> - </instance> - </deployment> - ... -</deployments -]]></programlisting> - <para>The portlet-instances.xml descriptor</para> - <programlisting><![CDATA[ -<web-app> - ... - <context-param> - <param-name>org.jboss.portal.content_type</param-name> - <param-value>filesystem</param-value> - </context-param> - <context-param> - <param-name>org.jboss.portal.portlet_instance</param-name> - <param-value>FSContentDrivenPortletInstance</param-value> - </context-param> - <listener> - <listener-class>org.jboss.content.ContentTypeRegistration</listener-class> - </listener> - ... -</web-app> -]]></programlisting> - <para>The web.xml descriptor</para> - <warning>You don't need to add the listener class into your war file. As it is provided by the portal - it will always be available.</warning> - </sect3> - </sect2> - </sect1> - <sect1> - <title>Configuring window content in deployment descriptor</title> - <para>How to create a portlet that will enable configuration of content at runtime has been covered above, however - it is also possible to configure content in deployment descriptors. With our previous example it would give - the following snippet placed in a <emphasis>*-portal.xml</emphasis> file: - </para> - <programlisting><![CDATA[ -<window> -<window-name>MyWindow</window-name> -<content> - <content-type>filesystem</content-type> - <content-uri>/dir1/foo.txt</content-uri> -</content> -<region>center</region> -<height>1</height> -</window> -]]></programlisting> - <imageobject> - <imagedata align="center" fileref="images/content/fs3.png" format="png"/> - </imageobject> - <caption>Final effect - portal window with FSContentDrivenPortlet</caption> - <note>How to configure CMS file this way is covered in the CMS chapter: <xref linkend="configuration-cms_content"/></note> - </sect1> -</chapter>