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>