ANNOUNCE: first snapshot with Portal environment support
sergeysmirnov Apr 25, 2007 10:45 PMWe are ready to announce the initial version of Ajax4jsf with portal support. The Ajax4jsf snapshots built after 6:00PM, Apr 25, 2007 will contain it.
Additionally, the simple example of portlet application - portal-echo has been created. It is available online at:
http://livedemo.exadel.com/portal/potral-echo/
This small application demonstrates:
1) Two instances of the same portlet work independently from each other.
2) Partial update of the portlet based on the client side event
3) Navigation inside the portlet without refreshing the whole portal page
To see the difference between two Ajax and Non-Ajax buttons:
a) decrease the height of the browser until scroll bar appears
b) scroll down the page
c) click the "Non-Ajax Submit" or "Ajax Submit" button
When you click the non-Ajax button, the page is refreshed and the scroller jumps up. It does not happen with Ajax button, because only the particular portlet is re-rendered when the navigation occurs.
The source code of the portal-echo application you can find at Jboss SVN (Revision 129 and up):
http://anonsvn.jboss.org/repos/ajax4jsf/trunk/samples/portal-echo/
How to build:
1. Take and build Ajax4jsf ( http://labs.jboss.com/wiki/HowToBuildAjax4jsf)
2. Launch:
mvn install
from samples/portal-echo/ directory
The target directory will contains the deployable file
How to deploy:
1. If you have no Jboss portal yet, download Jboss Portal+AS bundle from http://labs.jboss.com/jbossportal/download/index.html and copy it on your local disk
2. copy portal-echo.war into <jboss-server-home>/server/default/deploy
3. launch jboss server
4. Type URL: http://localhost:8080/portal/portal-echo
Additional to the three default navigation tabs, you can see two more: Portal-echo and Two-Portal-Echo . The first one contains one instance of portlet, the second one contains two instances of the same portlet.
Working with GUI Tool:
If you have an Eclipse 3.2 with WTP 1.5 (Exadel Studio 4.0.x is OK), you can import portal-echo project into Eclipse.
1. Right in the samples/portal-echo/ directory launch:
mvn eclipse:eclipse -DdownloadSources=true -Dwtpversion=1.5
2. Import portal-echo project as an Existing Project into Workspace
3. Create new Server configuration for Jboss Portal Server (use Jboss 4 from the list). Increase the timeout delay for server - Window -> Preferences; Server; Server timeout delay to "Longer"
4. Add portal-echo to the server for deployment
After that you are able to edit and launch the project from Eclipse. Do not ask me how to fight against the Jboss Portlet cache, however, Any advices how to do so are welcome. :-)
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This portlet application is tested with Jboss Portal only and using FireFox and IE browsers. All possible aspects of the portal environment are not tested. RichFaces components are not tested also. We plan to support most popular portals and all set of browsers declared for Ajax4jsf and Richfaces.
We assume that the initial version for portlet support might not be perfect. So, we are looking forward to hear from you. Any feedbacks (positive or negative) are welcome.