contents

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preface
acknowledgments
about this book
about the cover illustration

Part 1 Getting started with portlet development

Chapter 1 Introducing portals and portlets

What is a portal?

Benefits of web portals

What is a portlet?

Why use portlets?

Portal infrastructure

Getting started with Liferay Portal

Setting up the development environment

The Hello World portlet example

Summary

Chapter 2 The portlet lifecycle

Requirements for the User Registration portlet

Portlets vs. servlets—an in-depth look

Portlet URLs

Creating portlets

Generating portlet content based on portlet mode

Portlet development in depth

Implementing the User Registration portlet

Summary

Chapter 3 Portlet 2.0 API—portlet objects and container-runtime options

Requirements for the Book Catalog portlet

Portlet request objects

Portlet response objects

Storing user-specific data in a portlet session

Discovering the portlet environment using PortletContext

Retrieving portlet configuration using PortletConfig

Container-runtime options

Summary

Chapter 4 Portlet 2.0—API caching, security, and localization

Caching generated content

Localizing portlet content

Portlet modes in depth

Portlet window states in depth

Programmatic security

Uploading files, wrapping requests and responses, and creating portlet URL generation listeners

Designing portable portlets

Summary

Chapter 5 Building your own portal

Requirements for Book Portal

Getting started developing Book Portal

Creating portal pages and adding portlets

Configuring Liferay Portal server settings

Developing with the Liferay Plugins SDK

Summary

Chapter 6 Using the portlet tag library

Using the tag library to build a Book Catalog portlet

Accessing portlet-specific objects using <defineObjects>

Using <actionURL>, <renderURL>, and <resourceURL>

Adding parameters to portlet URLs using

Creating portlet-specific HTML elements using

Adding properties to URLs using

Summary

Part 2 Developing portlets using Spring and Hibernate

Chapter 7 Getting started with Spring Portlet MVC

Why use Spring Portlet MVC?

Dependency injection and the application context

A Hello World portlet, the Spring way

How Spring Portlet MVC works

Using DispatcherPortlet

Using the web application context

Using built-in controllers

Using built-in handler mappings

Using handler interceptors

Handling exceptions

Summary

Chapter 8 Annotation-driven development with Spring

An overview of annotations

Developing the Book Catalog portlet using annotations

Spring Portlet MVC annotations

Configuring beans that provide annotation support

Validating forms using Spring and JSR 303

Spring’s form tag library

Unit testing with mock objects and TestContext

Localizing content, uploading files, and adding CSS and JavaScript

Summary

Chapter 9 Integrating portlets with databases

Combining portlets and databases

Exploring the Book Catalog portlet’s database tables

Spring’s JDBC module for database interaction

Accessing Spring beans from non-Spring objects

AOP support in Spring Framework

Transaction management support in Spring Framework

Using Hibernate for database interaction

Summary

Part 3 Advanced portlet development

Chapter 10 Personalizing portlets

Introducing portlet personalization

Personalization requirements for the Book Catalog portlet

Showing personalization options in EDIT mode

Saving user preferences

Saving preferences with PortletPreferences

Validating preferences

Retrieving portlet preferences and personalizing the portlet

Summary

Chapter 11 Communicating with other portlets

Why do you need inter-portlet communication?

An inter-portlet communication example

Inter-portlet communication using portlet sessions

Inter-portlet communication using public render parameters

Inter-portlet communication using portlet events

Summary

Chapter 12 Ajaxing portlets

Ajax basics

Your first Ajax portlet

Securing Ajax requests

Ajax support in Portlet 2.0

Downloading binary content using portlets

Resource URLs and caching

Creating a rich interface for the Book Catalog portlet

Creating rich user interfaces using Ajax

Creating real-time portlets using Polling and Comet

Cross-domain Ajax

Ajax and inter-portlet communication

Summary

Chapter 13 Reusable logic with portlet filters

Types of portlet filters

Portlet filter interface methods and lifecycle

Using portlet filters with the Book Catalog portlet

Setting the portlet title with the portlet filter

Validating requests with portlet filters

Converting text to hyperlinks with portlet filters

Filter chaining

Summary

Chapter 14 Portlet bridges

What is a portlet bridge?

iFrame portlets

JSF portlets

Wicket portlets

Summary

Chapter 15 Web Services for Remote Portlets (WSRP)

What makes remote portlets a reality?

Getting started with WSRP using Liferay Portal

Creating a WSRP producer and adding portlets to it

Creating a WSRP consumer

Locally registering remote portlets

Registering WSRP consumers with WSRP producers

Summary

appendix A Getting started with GateIn Portal
appendix B Configuring Liferay Portal with MySQL database
                    index