Creating Your Own jboss-portal.sar

[derdirk]

I recognize that JBoss Portal is intended to provide an out-of-the-box portal implementation, where one only plugs in portlets, but doesn't have to worry the nitty-gritties of user management and so forth. I also understand that JSR-168 is only concerned with specifying portlets, but not portals.

However, I would like to utilize the portal and portlet technology for a web-based application, but I do not want to be tied into the portal's way of managing users, etc.

In other words, I would like to create my own version of jboss-portal.sar. I started mimiking what is in portal-server.war, but that didn't cut it.

Unfortunately, there is no documentation what config files are necessary, how they tie together, how the various framework classes (e.g. server, layout, etc.) need to be put together in order to create a portal.

Thus is my misery. Any help is appreciated.

[julien1]

if you want to achieve that and reuse the portal framework it is possible, however that will require you invest time in development as you will need to provide all that jboss-portal.sar does not provide.

[schnelzer]

We just deployed a portal with many application portlets. You don't need to use the JBoss Portal user management. We accomplished this by creating our own JAAS configuration and just modifying the web.xml files in the jboss-portal.sar to use our security realm instead of the default JBP security realm. Other than that you don't need to modify the jboss-portal.sar. There a number of different JAAS Login modules that are provided with JBoss AS. If one fits your needs, then its a pretty easy configuration change. Hope that helps.

[julien1]

the way to integrate fully with user/group is to reimplement the UserModule and RoleModule.

[derdirk]

Thanks Julien and Doug.

What I want to use JBoss Portal for is more for layout than as portal, similar to what you can do with tiles and struts.

So why not use tiles and struts? Openess! I want my application to be as product independent as possible and the best way to do so is utilize standards.

Tiles aren't standardized, but portlets are. Therefore, you can move the portlet code from one portal implementation to another, but you can't do that with tiles.

I recognize that portals themselves aren't standardized and there will be custom code when moving between portal products, but that cusom code will be minimal in relation to the application.

I don't need and don't want any of the admin, user or cms capability that comes with JBoss Portal. I only care about the portlet and layout functionality.

I guess I'll have to familiarize myself with the JBoss Portal code to accomplish my task.

[andrejt]

Doug,

can you be more specific about JAAS Login modules. Where to look at JAAS Login modules in jboss portal code?

"schnelzer" wrote:
Other than that you don't need to modify the jboss-portal.sar. There a number of different JAAS Login modules that are provided with JBoss AS. If one fits your needs, then its a pretty easy configuration change.

Andrej

[yxyang]

the way to integrate fully with user/group is to reimplement the UserModule and RoleModule.

Hi, Julien

This is true? I am trying to implement my own UserModule and RoleModule. But would you mind confirm this? Are there any other classes/interfaces involved?

Regards
Yang