Developing portlets

This section takes you through the process of creating portlets, introduces the concepts of the APIs used to develop portlets, and provides samples to get you started. It also provides information on integrating features such as single sign-on, cooperative sharing of information using the property broker, and migrating Struts applications to the portlet environment.

WebSphere Portal Express can support portlets written to the standard portlet API as well as portlets written to the legacy IBM portlet API. .

If you are not an experienced Java developer...
you can quickly integrate many of your existing resources into WebSphere Portal Express without developing your own portlets.
If you have Java and servlet development experience but are new to portlet development...
you should start by reading Portlet concepts and Standard portlet API. When you are ready to start developing portlets, see Understanding the basics for samples that demonstrate common features of the API.
If you have developed portlets with the IBM Portlet API...
Standard portlet API describes the new standards and provides links to topics that describe the difference between the two APIs and how to migrate to the standard.
If you have experience with Struts applications...
Struts Portlet Framework explains how to take an existing Struts application and convert it to a portlet.
If you are already familiar with portlet development using either the standard portlet API or the IBM portlet API...
Cooperative portlets describes how you can enable portlets to share information with other portlets on the page, using the property broker service. Collaborative Services API explains how you can integrate collaborative functionality into your portlets, such as online status, chat, and e-mail.

Rational Application Developer includes tools designed to help you develop portlet applications for WebSphere Portal Express.

Portlet concepts
Sample portlets
Understanding the basics
Portlet API
Info on standard and ibm portlet api
Portlet services
Application extension registry
WebSphere Portal Express provides an application extension registry which is equivalent to the application extension registry provided by IBM^® WebSphere^® Application Server Version 6.1. This registry allows any J2EE compliant application to define extension points for other applications to use, or to plug in to other extensible applications. The application extension registry uses the Eclipse plug-in descriptor format and APIs as the standard extensibility mechanism for WebSphere applications. For more information about the application extension registry, see the related information.
Collaborative Services API
Lotus Collaborative Services provide Java API methods and tags for JavaServer Pages (JSP files) for extending the functionality of collaborative portlets such as the Domino and Extended Products Portlets, People Finder, and Common PIM portlets.
Developing portlets
This section takes you through the process of creating portlets, introduces the concepts of the APIs used to develop portlets, and provides samples to get you started. It also provides information on integrating features such as single sign-on, cooperative sharing of information using the property broker, and migrating Struts applications to the portlet environment.
Model SPI overview
Models provide information needed by WebSphere Portal Express to perform tasks such as content aggregation or building navigation to browse the aggregated content. The information that is aggregated is represented through models that can be accessed programmatically using the Model SPI (read-only). The information of a model is usually persistent (stored in a data base) but can also be transient (computed and stored only in memory). Models can be represented using a tree structure (nodes have a parent-child relationship), a list structure, or a selection structure (a selected element in a tree structure).
Controller SPI
You can use the Controller SPI for portal administration. It allows you to modify portal resources. It enhances the read-only portal Model SPI by adding writable aspects.
User and group management
Drag and drop zones
WebSphere Portal Express includes markup that allows users to drag portlets on a page. This topic describes the tags and APIs provided to enable the drag and drop features and how you can include them in your custom themes and skins.
Dynamic user interfaces
Portlet development reference
What is new - next generation Web user interface features
Learn about new portal features that pertain to the next generation type of Web user interface.
The client side portlet programming model
You can benefit from the portal client side aggregation by using the client side programming model for portlets.
Semantic tagging for click-to-action
IBM WebSphere Portal Express supports a semantic tagging API for end user controlled data transfer between components. With semantic tagging, a component on a page can declare sources and targets for data transfer. For example, this can be a portlet or a navigation element. When the user clicks on a source element, the portal displays a context menu listing targets that match the selected source. When a menu item is selected, the portal invokes the corresponding target passing it the source data. This process is called Click-to-Action (C2A).
The portal Web 2.0 theme
The Web 2.0 theme of the portal provides an improved user experience and better performance.

Parent topic: Developing for WebSphere Portal Express

Parent topic: Developing portlets