BEAWebLogic Portal® Portal Development Guide Version 10.2 Revised: February 2008 Contents 1. Introduction to Portals What is a Portal? . .1-1 What is the Portal Framework? . 1-3 Portal Development and the Portal Life Cycle . 1-3 Architecture . 1-4 Development. 1-4 Staging . 1-5 Production. 1-5 Getting Started . 1-6 Prerequisites . 1-6 Related Guides . 1-6 Part I. Architecture 2. Planning Your Portal Production Operations (Propagation and Deployment) . 2-2 Portal Development in a Distributed Portal Team. 2-2 Federated Portals . .2-3 Security . 2-3 Content Management . 2-4 Interaction Management . 2-4 Performance . 2-5 Portals and Mobile Devices . 2-5 BEA WebLogic Portal Portal Development Guide iii Part II. Development 3. Understanding Portal Development Portal Components . 3-1 Portal Component Hierarchy. 3-3 Portal Development Environment in WorkSpace Studio . 3-5 WebLogic Portal and Shared J2EE Libraries . 3-8 File-Based Portals and Streaming Portals . 3-9 Java Controls in Portals. 3-10 JSP Tags in Portals . 3-11 Asynchronous Rendering . 3-12 Backing Files. 3-12 How Backing Files are Executed . 3-13 Thread Safety and Backing Files . 3-14 Scoping and Backing Files. 3-14 Using the Session to Pass Data Between Life Cycle Methods . 3-15 Backing File Guidelines. 3-15 Page Flows in Portals . 3-17 State/Session Management . 3-17 HTTP Session Sharing . 3-18 4. Setting up Your Portal Development Environment Roadmap for Environment Setup Tasks . 4-2 Portal Perspective . 4-5 WebLogic Domain Configuration Wizard . 4-5 Portal EAR Project Wizard . 4-7 New Portal EAR Project – Select Project Facets Dialog . 4-8 Add and Remove Projects Dialog . 4-9 iv BEA WebLogic Portal Portal Development Guide Portal Web Project Wizard . 4-11 New Portal Web Project – Portal Web Project . 4-11 New Portal Web Project – Select Project Facets dialog . 4-13 New Portal Web Project - Web Module Dialog . 4-15 New Portal Web Project - WebLogic Web Module Dialog . 4-16 Portal Datasync Project Wizard. 4-17 Create New Datasync Project – EAR Projects. 4-20 Associating Web and Datasync Projects with EAR Projects . 4-22 Associating an Web Project with an EAR Project . 4-23 Associating an Datasync Project with an EAR Project . 4-23 Using the Merged Projects View. 4-23 Opening the Merged Projects View . 4-23 Working with the Merged Projects View . 4-24 Running a Project on the Server . 4-24 Stopping the Server . 4-25 Customizing a Perspective. 4-26 Setting WebLogic Portal Preferences in WorkSpace Studio. 4-26 Preferences in the WebLogic Portal Section . 4-26 WebLogic Portal Preferences in the General Section. 4-27 5. Integrating Applications into WebLogic Portal Integrating an Existing Web Application into WorkSpace Studio . 5-2 Integrating Struts Applications . 5-6 Preparing Your Struts Application for Integration . 5-7 Integration Steps. 5-9 Best Practices and Development Issues . 5-10 Integrating Java Server Faces . 5-11 JSF and the namingContainer JSP Tag. 5-11 BEA WebLogic Portal Portal Development Guide v Integrating Page Flows . 5-12 Adding Facets to an Existing Project . 5-12 Other Methods of Integrating an External Web Application into a Portal . 5-14 6. User Interface Development with Look And Feel Features Look And Feel Framework Overview . 6-2 Working with Look And Feel Files. 6-3 Defining a Look And Feel for a Desktop. 6-4 Customizing Look and Feels. 6-4 Combining Skins and Skeletons in a New Look And Feel . 6-6 Defining Titlebar Buttons and Window Icons . 6-7 Modifying CSS Files . ..