Seam portlet with Facelet support

[zeroconf]

Hi,

I'm quite new to seam but I need to know if it is possible to do a big project using seam and jboss portal.

I'am playing arround with the seam portal example.

But I don't understand why the following things don't appear in this example like in the "normal" booking example:
- no Facelets support, all views have a .jsp file suffix
- the web.xml file looks quit different

Some more questions:
- how can debugging be enabled in portlet mode ?
- is it possible to use the s:link jsf tag ?

The seam documentation gives me the impression that it should be straight forward to switch a "normal" seam application to a portlet based seam application by just altering the following line in faces-config.xml

<lifecycle>
<phase-listener>org.jboss.seam.jsf.{Transactional}SeamPhaseListener</phase-listener>
</lifecycle>

to

<lifecycle>
<phase-listener>org.jboss.seam.jsf.{Transactional}SeamPortletPhaseListener</phase-listener>
</lifecycle>

Is there anybody how has experience with developing portlets using seam and might supply me with a small sample seam portlet beside the one wich come with the example from the seam package (including Facelets support)?

I really need to know if it's worth doing further research to prove if seam is ready to build larger portlet applications or if JSR-168 support in seam just means - JSR-168 is supported but it will be quite painfull or impossible to build larger projects.

Please don't take me wrong at this point - I don't want to complain about seam - I just need some more information. As far as I know about seam - I love the elegant way seam supports - and so I'd really appreciate using seam in my next portal project. But the problem with projects - there always is a deadline and I don't want to get stuck in the middle if someone is out there knowing more about seam and jboss portal to let me know that it wouldn't be a good idea to use seam - at least not at the current stage of seam.

Regards
zeroconf

[bsmithjj]

You should review the discussion here http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&t=98395

While you can certainly 'do a big project' using Seam or using JBoss Portal, you may find that portlet bridging and issues with stable deployment descriptors and certain API's result in a less-than-productive experience if you use JBoss Portal (in its current form - the 2.0.X series is simpler, stabler). To me it's more a matter of 'should I use Seam?' or 'should I build my webapp(s) as portlets?' Given the choice, I would choose Seam + Facelets and ditch the portlets alltogether.

[zeroconf]

Hi bsmithjj,

thanks for you reply.

What do you mean with version 2.0.X ? Do you recommend using this version of jboss portal instead of version 2.4 ?

Do you have any alternative suggeation instead of using seam for portlet development? I have to use a portal environment hence of project requirements.

So as far as I can estimate the current state of seam (with my poor knowledge at the moment) - "portlet support" seem more like a teaser to me.

Anybody else with consolidated knowledge about developing portlet using seam ?

Regards
zeroconf

[h.cahyadi]

Now I work with seam+facelets+myfaces+portlet, but like in my previous post, I found so many dificulties, but poorly I am not the decision maker in my project, so I try to keep going with that combination, may I know what kind of project that you in now?

[zeroconf]

hi h.cahyadi

can you outline some main problems you discovered developing portlets using seam?

What do you mean by saying that you're not the decision maker - what would you choose - portlets (x)or seam?

My projects needs to integrate many different smaller applications with the ability to plugin new applications easily - so an portal environment can offers this.

I used plain JSF one and a half years ago to develop my first portlets - but this was sometimes really like a nightmare because especially when I was trying to use more than one JSF portlet per portal page - which is quite the normal case ..
(I have to admit that I used Liferay).

So now that I'm coming back to portals again I was hoping to find an new amazing framework which helps doing all the non-problem specific stuff and fastens building the actual business solution.

So - h.cahyadi - it sounds that you are quite more experienced using seam in a portal environment than I am -
do you (or anybody else) have any smaller portlet skeleton application which uses faceltes (an maybe some more seam specific stuff) which you might provide? or even some links to those or some tutorial because the portal seam example doesn't really satisfy me?
(For example no one answered to my former question concerning the example portlet http://jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&t=98250)

Regards
zeroconf

[jboss.biancashouse.com]

Hey Hari,

I saw your post that says you managed to build a portlet using Seam with Facelets. Well done. Can't wait to see how you did it.

Are you able to share your discovery with us ? Overnight you will become a very popular person indeed.

Hope you are able to help us. Many thanks

Ian
Sydney

[h.cahyadi]

Hi [e-mail] What can I share to you? the configuration? or something else? I believe that there are somebody else who have done some thing same with me, to use facelets inside the portal, do you already check facelets wiki? but I still found some problems with my application, maybe I can share it here :

1. Inter Portlet Communication problem: if we do IPC, seam cannot detect if existing conversation exist, so every time I make an IPC new converstion is created, so I resolved this problem with kick out the IPC, this already old issue, I don't know if the current version of seam already fix this issue

2. Multiple window isolated state, you can view that thread on this forum also

3. Back button problem, you can view that thread also in this forum

4. Still confusing about the seam interceptor, until now I not declare the seam interceptor, but I can still get seam "magic" like bijection, conversation demarcation, etc, so what is the essence of declaring/using seam interceptor

Lets share, and tell me what can I share to you, I will share it, as long as it not confidential for my company

Thanx and Regards,
-haric-