In this chapter we will cover:
- Managing portals using XML
- Managing portal pages using XML
- Managing registered portlets using XML
- Managing the navigation tree using XML
- Wrapping it all up in a separate EAR
In this chapter, we will reprise all the concepts introduced in the previous chapter by trying to understand how to manage some of the portal contents using the extension mechanism provided by GateIn.
The main goal of this XML engine is to create contents on the first bootstrap of the portal instance without using the GUI. The GUI is a nice tool for prototyping the portal and after this initial elaboration phase, for industrial-size portals, the XML configuration is a reliable way to code and deploy a portal from testing to a production environment.
We will therefore start by discussing how to initialize portals and pages in the XML format, and we will then describe how to inject registered applications in to pages. Finally, you will learn how to create a unique WAR/EAR Java EE deployment component for encapsulating all your customization items.
As you will learn in this chapter, the entire portal configuration will be essentially based on three different configuration sections: portal, pages, and navigation:
- The portal section will be responsible for information about the layout of and applications available for the portal
- The pages section will describe all the details of each page in the portal, including layout and applications
- The navigation section will configure the navigation tree of the portal
This means that before starting your own portal application, you will need to configure each of these sections by following all the recipes in this chapter.
Note
Note that to build your own portal using XML, you must follow all the recipes in this chapter without missing any configuration files. Otherwise, you may have some issues during the deployment of your custom portal. This is because different configuration files are explained in different recipes.
This chapter will show you the different configuration sections. Whenever you need to restore a new configuration of the portal, if you are using the default portal bundle, you willl have to delete the data folder of GateIn. Otherwise, if you are using any other DBMS, you need to remove all the tables that are referred to for the content storage previously configured for the portal.