DOJO and WebSphere Portal

The WebSphere Portal 6.1.X internally uses the Dojo Version 1.3.2 for its themes. Also, The WebSphere Portal 6.1.5 supports two versions of Dojo (i.e, V1.1.1 and V1.3.2). You need to consider the dojo version before you do the development of portal application which uses Dojo.

You can find the information about how to upgrade/downgrade portal themes from Dojo 1.1.1 to 1.3.2 & vice versa in the following url


Dojo and WebSphere Portal

Using and migrating Dojo versions with WebSphere Portal themes

What's new in WebSphere Portal 7

Click here to see the detailed information about what's new in WebSphere Portal 7.0.

Theme update in WebSphere Portal V6.1

IBM has recently published a very good article for publishing a Theme War into WebSphere Portal V6.1. Click here for more details.

Portlet Modes (WebSphere Portal 6.0 Onwards)

The below are the portlet modes and its use in WebSphere Portal.


View Mode - Default portlet mode, It will be used to display all end user functionalities.
Edit Mode (Personalize) - This is user specific personalize mode. What ever changes are made and stored into portlet preference, that will affect only that specific user.
Edit Defaults Mode (Edit Shared Settings) - This mode will be available only for portal admins. Also, this will be available for users with minimum page level access rights as Editor and Portlet access rights as Administrator. The changes into this preference value will affect all the users.
NOTE: This is only for the portlet occurence in that page.
Config Mode - This is configuration mode. What ever changes are made into this mode will affect all occurence on that portal.
Help Mode - Generally this will be used to give more details about that portlet functionality and its use.

Reading LTPA Cookie from Portlet & Servlet and passing the LTPA cookie into remote WebSphere Server using REST call.

Sample code which shows how you can get the LTPA cookie value from portlet and servlet.

######### Reading from Servlet Starts #############

String ltpaToken = null;
Cookie[] cookies = httpServletRequest.getCookies();

for (int i = 0; i < cookies.length; i++)
{
if (cookies[i].getName().equals("LtpaToken"))
{
ltpaToken = cookies[i].getValue(); break;
}
}
######### Reading from Servlet Ends #############

########## Reading from Portlet Starts #############

String myCookie = renderRequest.getProperty("cookie");
String ltpaToken = "";
StringTokenizer st = new StringTokenizer (myCookie, "; ");
while(st.hasMoreTokens())
{
String key = st.nextToken();
if(key.indexOf("LtpaToken") > -1)
{
int equalSign = key.indexOf("=");
ltpaToken = key.substring(equalSign+1);
}
}

########## Reading from Portlet Ends#############
### Setting inside URLConnection object & sending to remote portal server ###
// After getting the ltpa token, setting into URL connection to pass the ltpa cookie to the external server url.
if (ltpaToken != null)
{
String cookie = "LtpaToken=" + ltpaToken.toString();
URL url = new URL("http://myportal:port/wps/myportal)
URLConnection conn = url.openConnection();
conn.setRequestProperty("Cookie", cookie);
conn.connect();
}

Tips - Softwares ( During our Work)

The following are the utility software which i felt it will be very useful for Web Developers.

Aptana Studio - Web Resource development such as HTML, CSS, JS e.t.c
7-zip - Extract format such as zip, war, rar e.t.c
Notepad++ - It has many cool features. ( It will open any huge size text file )
Ever Note - Repository to keep all your personal docs. There is a way to encode the file and it can be protected using password.

Will keep you posting with other softwares...

How to set & get a value from Portlet Preference while developing a portlet using WebSphere Portlet Factory

Below is the sample code which will give a clear idea about how you can set/get a value from Portlet Preference while developing a portlet using WebSphere Portlet Factory.

Create a LJO(Linked Java Object) builder and copy the below code and replace MY_DEPARTMENT value into the value you want to set & get from Portlet Preference.


########################## Sample Code Starts #############################

public class PortletPreferenceWPFSample {
PortletRequest portletRequest = null;

private static final String MY_DEPARTMENT="myDepartment";
private static final String DEFAULT_MY_DEPARTMENT="";

public void setPreferences(WebAppAccess webAppAccess , String myDepartment)
{
try{
// Getting HttpServletRequest from WebAppAcces object.
HttpServletRequest request = webAppAccess.getHttpServletRequest();
// Type casting into Portlet Request.
portletRequest = (PortletRequest) request.getAttribute(com.bowstreet.adapters.Constants.PORTLET_REQUEST);
javax.portlet.PortletPreferences preferences = portletRequest.getPreferences();


//Storing the myDepartment in to portlet preferences Object.
preferences.setValue(MY_DEPARTMENT,myDepartment);

preferences.store();


}catch(Exception err)
{
err.printStackTrace();
}

}


public String getPreferences(WebAppAccess webAppAccess)
{
HttpServletRequest request = webAppAccess.getHttpServletRequest();
portletRequest = (PortletRequest) request.getAttribute(com.bowstreet.adapters.Constants.PORTLET_REQUEST);

javax.portlet.PortletPreferences preferences = portletRequest.getPreferences();

String myDepartment= preferences.getValue(MY_DEPARTMENT,DEFAULT_MY_DEPARTMENT);

return myDepartment;

}
}


##### Function call to above method from remote place such as method or other LJO class #####
// Calling setPreferences method to store folder path into it. Where PortletPreferenceWPFSample_LJO is the LJO builder name for PortletPreferenceWPFSample class.
webAppAccess.callMethod("PortletPreferenceWPFSample_LJO.setPreferences", myDepartment);

########################## Sample Code Ends #############################

Hints while working with Power point, MS Word office 2007

Learn how to add music to office 2007 power point - Add voice/music to powerpoint- office 2007

In MS Word:

Creating Table of Contents:

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/word/hp012253721033.aspx

Creating Section Breaks:

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/word/HA100310731033.aspx

Pg Numbering (video):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGzz2ZmLrFw

Docs for learning WebSphere Portletfactory

I hope the following material will help people to get comfortable with IBM WebSphere PortletFactory.

Startup Tutorial

WPF e-Book

Other Links:

Best Practices for Creating Portlets with WebSphere PortletFactory

IBM Support Portal - WebSPhere PortletFactory

WebSphere Portlet Factory product documentation

WebSphere Portlet Factory Samples: Data Services

Steps to Increase WebSphere PortletFactory Application's Performance

The following link will help every one to increase the performance of WebSphere Portletfactory applications.


Click here to see.