GCube Portlets Deploying on Liferay

Gcube Portlets to Liferay

Porting and deploying the existing gCube portlets to Liferay portal is an easy task. The deployment of a portlet to Liferay requires an existing installation of the Liferay portal bundled with the Apache Tomcat server (For more information on how to install and configure Liferay portal visit: [D4Science Portal Installation] ).
The required changes are focused on the configuration files that Liferay requires and on the way the logged in user's information are retrieved. After setting up these information then the portlet can be compiled and deployed on liferay.

Create a new Liferay Portlet

• Go to $LIFERAY_HOME/liferay-plugins-sdk/ directory
• If the create.sh script file (located in the current directory) is not executable, change its permissions
• Execute ./create.sh "portlet-id" "portlet-name"
• A new directory with name portlet-name-portlet is created at the $LIFERAY_HOME/liferay-plugins-sdk/portlets directory

Liferay portlet hierarchical organization

The hierarchical organization of a liferay portlet is the following:

• portlet-name-portlet
  • docroot
    • css
    • js
    • WEB-INF
      • classes
      • lib
      • src
      • tld
      • liferay-display.xml
      • liferay-plugin-package.properties
      • liferay-portlet.xml
      • portlet.xml
      • web.xml
    • icon.png
    • view.jsp
  • build.xml

The source code of the portlet should be copied inside the src directory.

Modify the configuration files

• liferay-portlet.xml

The elements that should be placed in that file must follow the exact order

  <portlet>
     <portlet-name>”portletName”</portlet-name>
     <icon>/icon.png</icon> //optional 
     <layout-cacheable>false</layout-cacheable>  //for loading the new portlet
     <instanceable>false</instanceable>  //to use one portlet instance for the D4S portal
     <ajaxable>false</ajaxable>  //it is need for the correct rendering of the GWT portlet
     <header-portlet-css>/css/test.css</header-portlet-css>
  </portlet>

---

• liferay-display.xml

The element 'category' is recommended to use the name "gCube Applications"

  <display>
     <category name="gCube Applications">
        <portlet id="'portlet-id'" />
     </category>
  </display>

---

• portlet.xml

  <portlet-class>add you portlet class here</portlet-class>
  ...
 <security-role-ref>
     <role-name>administrator</role-name>
 </security-role-ref>
  ...

The root directory is considered the docroot directory

• web.xml

The web.xml of the existing portlets can be used at the liferay portlet. Remove any references to gridshere servlet mappings.

How to get the logged in user's information

The users that are logged in to the portal have certain information registered that can be retrieved using the Liferay's API.

long userid = Long.parseLong(request.getRemoteUser());
 
User user = null;
try {
        user = UserLocalServiceUtil.getUser(userid);
} catch (PortalException e) {
} catch (SystemException e) {
 
String username = user.getScreenName();   //Gets the username
String fullName = user.getFullName();     //Gets the fullname
String email = user.getEmailAddress();    //Gets the email address

The needed imports are:

import com.liferay.portal.model.User;
 
import com.liferay.portal.service.UserLocalServiceUtil;
 
import com.liferay.portal.service.UserService;
 
import com.liferay.portal.service.UserServiceUtil;
 
import com.liferay.portal.PortalException;
import com.liferay.portal.SystemException;

The jars that are needed can be found at $CATALINA_HOME/common/lib/ext and are the following:

• portal-kernel.jar
• portal-service.jar

Compiling & Deploying a portlet to Liferay

In order to compile your portlet go to portlet's directory and execute: ant compile
If the compilation succeeded you can deploy the portlet to Liferay by executing: ant deploy

Liferay supports hot deployment for portlets so if the deploy is successful then no restart is needed.