How to obtain the current portlet instance?

[ebephil]

Hi,

as the title says, I am looking for a way to get the current org.jboss.portal.core.model.instance.Instance from within a portlet.

The goal is to store preferences on instance level (in the EDIT mode for example). By digging through the Admin portlet I figured out how to do that. What I could not figure out however is how to obtain the current instance to perform the setProperties() call on. The admin portlet iterates a list of all instances, while I just want to edit the current instance of the portlet.

Currently, I am deriving the name of the instance from the window name, but that's just an ugly hack as it only works if portlet instances are created in a certain way (that is, if their name ends with 'Instance').

I did find some posts regarding instance preferences, but none of them seemed to answer my question.

I am aware that this is outside the scope of the JSR-168 spec and internal JBoss APIs could change at any time.

I am using JBoss Portal 2.7.2 on top of JBoss 4.2.3, using PortletBridge 1.0.0.CR2 RichFaces 3.3.1.

Thanks in advance
Phil

PS: I attached my existing code, maybe it helps clarifying my problem. My main concern is the getCurrentInstance() method.

 // This is the part I am trying to implement properly
 private Instance getCurrentInstance() {
 PortalNodeImpl currentNode = Navigation.getCurrentNode();
 Navigation.getPortalRuntimeContext().
 return getInstanceContainer().getDefinition(
 currentNode.getName().replaceAll("Window", "Instance"));
 }

 // this works perfectly fine, at least when used with the right portlet instance
 public boolean writePref(String prefKey, String newPrefValue) {
 Instance currentInstance = getCurrentInstance();
 if (null == currentInstance) {
 logger.error("<-- writePref() Current Instance is null, stopping.");
 return false;
 }
 try {
 List<PropertyChange> changeList = new ArrayList<PropertyChange>();
 PropertyChange change = PropertyChange.newUpdate(prefKey,
 newPrefValue);
 changeList.add(change);
 PropertyChange[] changeArray = changeList
 .toArray(new PropertyChange[changeList.size()]);
 logger.info("--> save()", " setting properties");
 currentInstance.setProperties(changeArray);
 } catch (PortletInvokerException e) {
 logger.error(e.toString());
 return false;
 } catch (Exception e) {
 logger.error(e.toString());
 return false;
 } catch (Throwable t) {
 logger.error(t.toString());
 return false;
 }
 return true;
 }

[ebephil]

I improved my guessing, but it's still just a guess. As long as administrators can enter custom window names (and I don't want to modify the admin portlet) I would have to show an Instance selection dialogue whenever my getCurrentInstance() fails.

Any ideas anyone?

[ebephil]

It took more two afternoons, but I found a solution.

The trick is to use the PortalObjectContainer to obtain the current PortalObject from the current PortalNode.

Anyway, here's my code:

 private Instance getCurrentInstance() {
 PortalNodeImpl node = Navigation.getCurrentNode();
 if (node.getType() != PortalNode.TYPE_WINDOW) {
 return null;
 }
 PortalObjectId id = node.getObjectId();
 Window window = (Window) getPortalObjectContainer().getObject(id);
 PortletContent pc = (PortletContent) window.getContent();
 return getInstanceContainer().getDefinition(pc.getInstanceRef());
 }

 @Override
 public boolean writePref(String prefKey, String newPrefValue) {
 Instance currentInstance = getCurrentInstance();

 if (null == currentInstance) {
 logger.error("<-- writePref() Current Instance is null, stopping.");
 return false;
 }

 try {
 List<PropertyChange> changeList = new ArrayList<PropertyChange>();
 PropertyChange change = PropertyChange.newUpdate(prefKey,
 newPrefValue);
 changeList.add(change);

 PropertyChange[] changeArray = changeList
 .toArray(new PropertyChange[changeList.size()]);

 logger.info("--> save()", " setting properties");
 currentInstance.setProperties(changeArray);

 } catch (PortletInvokerException e) {
 logger.error(e.toString());
 return false;
 } catch (Exception e) {
 logger.error(e.toString());
 return false;
 } catch (Throwable t) {
 logger.error(t.toString());
 return false;
 }

 return true;
 }

You need to inject the InstanceContainer and PortalObjectContainer via the jboss-portlet.xml:

<portlet-app>
...
 <service>
 <service-name>PortalObjectContainer</service-name>
 <service-class>org.jboss.portal.core.model.portal.PortalObjectContainer</service-class>
 <service-ref>portal:container=PortalObject</service-ref>
 </service>
 <service>
 <service-name>InstanceContainer</service-name>
 <service-class>org.jboss.portal.core.model.instance.InstanceContainer</service-class>
 <service-ref>:container=Instance</service-ref>
 </service>
...
</portlet-app>

Then you can access them in your beans, I do it by injecting them via faces-config.xml:

<faces-config>
...
 <managed-bean>
 <managed-bean-name>portletPreferencesHelper</managed-bean-name>
 <managed-bean-class>package.foo.PortletPreferencesHelperJBossImpl</managed-bean-class>
 <managed-bean-scope>session</managed-bean-scope>
 <managed-property>
 <property-name>instanceContainer</property-name>
 <value>#{applicationScope.InstanceContainer}</value>
 </managed-property>
 <managed-property>
 <property-name>portalObjectContainer</property-name>
 <value>#{applicationScope.PortalObjectContainer}</value>
 </managed-property>
 </managed-bean>
...
</faces-config>

And now I finally have InstancePreferences capsuled in a Bean. Btw: Reading the PortletPreferences works the usual way. As I never write user-level PortletPreferences, the Portal always falls back to the InstancePreferences.