Develop and deploy a Struts application as a WebSphere Portal V5 portlet

This document describes how to develop and deploy an application that runs and deployed as a portlet in IBM WebSphere Portal V5 using Jakarta Struts Framework (incorporated into IBM Struts portlet framework).

Introduction This article discusses how to use Struts Portlet Framework to implement a portlet written for IBM WebSphere Portal Version 5 (hereinafter referred to as WebSphere Portal). Struts is an Apache Jakarta project that provides a very popular open source framework for creating a web application. WebSphere Portal V5.0 provides Struts Portlet Framework to support the Struts application as a portlet deployment. The Struts Portlet Framework also supports Portal mode and devices in the Struts application.

If you have read the previous article describing the use of status mode to implement portlet, you will be familiar with the sample application used in this article. It follows the same design principle, but here is the use of Struts to develop and deploy. This application maintains a contact list that is specific to the user who logs in to Portal (address this entry). The contact list is stored in the database or memory. Users can individually view the contacts in the list for more detailed information. The edit mode of the portlet allows the user to add, delete, or modify contact information.

The focus of this article is not to develop a Struts web application; in the development of the implementation and configuration required for the Struts application as a portlet. You can learn how to create a portlet using Jakarta Struts Framework. In WebSphere Portal V5, Struts Portlet Framework came with Jakarta Struts 1.1.0.

The following products are used in the development and deployment of the sample application:

IBM WebSphere Portal Server Version 5.0 IBM WebSphere Application Server Version 5 A database for saving a contact entry (optional) IBM WebSphere Studio Version 5 (optional)

About the sample portlet application sample application implements a create / read / update / delete (crUd) operation for a set of persistent data. It maintains a list of contacts for specific users (such as simple address books). This application allows users to individually view contact entries or view contact entries in a list.

From a visual perspective, the implementation of the contact list application includes the following view (page):

Login View - Displays the view of the user login. Main View - Displays the contact list and takes options to select more information. Detailed View (Detail View) - Displays the details of the selected contact. Main Edit View - Displays the contact list and has an option to add, delete, and modify contact information. Add a contact view - Displays the table view to enter the information of the new contact. Modify the contact view (Modify Contact View) - Displays the form view to display the elements data of the existing contacts and allow updates.

This app does not provide an explicit page to delete an entry. Instead, to delete an entry, the user needs to select a contact entry from the main editing page, and then delete the process and refresh the main editing page. If there is an error, the system will display the appropriate message. No confirmation page and successfully executed page. Figure 1. Main view

Design portlet application

The previous article on the use of status mode implementation portlet is similar to the discussion below, because Struts implementation and status mode are basically similar.

Consider the operation and view of this application. You can see the operation as a user-level function or behavior you want to implement for the portlet. For example, you may need an action to add a contact or display a specific view. The view is the performance of the application after completing the user operation. For example, the result of adding a new contact can produce the result of the editing mode, the view of the portlet displays the contact home list.

Next, consider how you want the app to be visual. In this example, you need a main view page to list the contacts created. This page should allow users to choose a contact and obtain additional details about this person.

You want the contact list to each user; therefore, this portlet requires the user (user) object to be associated with the logged user.

You want to allow users to add, delete, and modify contacts in the list. You can provide a master-editing page to list contacts and support the deletion and modification of the selected entry. You don't need to delete a selected entry for the user to implement another view; you only need to allow users to delete a selected entry, and then use the modified contact list to refresh the primary editing page.

If the user selects a contact for modification, you can display a detailed page that can update any properties of this contact entry. After the user has completed the modification, you can restrict the main editing page.

Similarly, you can add a new contact from the main editing page. You can display another detailed page that users can enter and save properties of the contact entries. After the user is saved, you can re-display the primary editing page with the updated list.

Now you can determine the state shift available for this application. By applying appropriate operations to generate specific views, you can manage transfer. In the figure below, the view (JSP) is indicated by an ellipse, and the operation is indicated by a rectangle.

Figure 2. Status transfer graph

Implement portlet using Struts

This design requires you to achieve 7 operations. These operations are defined in the implementation provided herein:

MainviewAction DetailViewAction MAINEDITACTION AddContactivity deleteContactAction ModifyAction ModifyContactAction

From the state diagram you can see that the Add Contact view is actually direct steering from the main view to Add Contact JSP. Because no logic is required before rendering the Add Contact view, you can simply call the Add Contact JSP and configure it to global forward instead of operation.

Establish development environment

To launch a Struts-based Portle project in WebSphere Studio, you need to follow these steps:

Create a new J2EE Level 1.3 Enterprise Application Engineering. Import the Struts Portlet Framework. In the Standard WebSphere Portal V5.0 installer, you will find the portalstrutsblank.war file in the /dev/strutsblank.war directory. Importing this WAR file will add the Struts JAR file to the project lib directory for Jakarta Struts and IBM Struts Portlet Framework. Figure 3. Importing Struts Portlet Framework After the import is complete, you may see some verification warnings and an error in the project's WebSphere Studio task list. XML validation error: Attribute "bundle" must be declared for element type "field" in validation.xml WARNING: Target welcome does not exist in the following modules: / Warning: Target /Welcome.do does not exist in the following modules: / In Index.jsp and struts-config.xml. You can now ignore these messages. After you update the default validation.xml, you can solve the verification error. The validator in WebSphere Studio gives warnings about the resources that cannot be found in the basic module. You can now ignore these messages. This completes the basic settings of developing the Struts application in Studio.

If you don't use Studio, make sure that the following JAR files (and the Struts JAR file you import) are available in the build path. You can find these files in WebSphere Application Server and WebSphere Portal directories.

/lib/ivjejb35.jar /lib/j2ee.jar /lib/runtime.jar /lib/servletEvent.jar / Java / JRE / lib / rt.jar /shared/app/portlet-api.jar

Before considering the implementation details of the category, beans, forms, and supported classes, make sure the implementation of the application configuration file. These files include:

Web application deployment descriptor, web.xml struts form verification XML file, validation.xml portlet deployment descriptor, portlet.xml struts configuration file, struts-config.xml

You need to update all of these files.

Web deployment descriptor - web.xml default web.xml file is provided as part of Portal Struts Framework. You need to change the deployment descriptor based on a particular application. First, "DISPLAY-NAME" is changed to the name meaningful name, such as Contacts List. ID must be unique in the deployed portal environment. Change this value to a unique string.

Building Struts 1.1 support in this framework divides the application into a module. When using the module, the configuration information and directory structure of a program are divided by module. Therefore, instead of a single struts-config.xml file for the application, you have multiple control files with independent directory structures, which are identified by the application URI. Struts Portlet Framework utilizes module support to provide Struts configuration mode and device (tag) distinction. The search path is used to determine the module and struts-config.xml file you want to use. It also determines the basic directory for positioning JSP. When searching for modules, add the following initial parameters Set the search path to consider tag names and patterns when searching modules.

ModulesEarchPath

Markupname, Mode

You created two modules for this app, one for editing mode, and another for help mode. The view mode is configured by the basic Struts configuration. These two modules are configured as initial parameters in such a form: / config / / . Therefore, you have config / html / edit and config / html / help. Add the parameter values ​​associated with these modules to indicate where to start searching the Struts profile.

config / html / help

/web-inf/html/help/struts-config.xml

config / html / edit

/Web-inf/html/edit/struts-config.xml

Add two applications-specific initial parameters persist_to_db and DataSource to support persistence classes, which is part of the download. Setting this value to TRUE to cause deployment database proxies. If you use the database agent, you also need to set the data source. Set the value of the data source to the name of this data source. If you are using persistence in memory, you can ignore the value of the data source.

Finally, change the list of welcome files. Struts Portlet Framework allows you to specify an initial view of the device / mode. This can be specified by the list of welcome files.

Index.jsp

HTML / Help / Index.jsp

html / edit / index.jsp

Portlet deployment descriptor - portlet.xml

You must also change the default portlet.xml file, which is provided by the blank Struts portlet.

Change and to meaningful names. Change the to the unique identifier. Change HREF to the associated servlet ID, which is specified as a web.xml value. For example, if you specify a ContactSlistportlet for a servlet ID in Web.xml, you can specify a web-inf / web.xml # ContactSlistportlet for portlet href in portlet.xml. Specify the editing and help mode support for the HTML device, and view mode. For specific portlet applications, the unique UID and meaningful names are specified for portlet-app-name and portlet-name. The value of the Concrete-Portlet HREF matches the value of the portlet application . Finally, a meaningful value is specified for the language of the title, short title (Title-Short), a description and keyword (Keywords). Listing 1. Portlet.xml

"- // ibm // DTD portlet application 1.1 // en" "portlet_1.1.dtd">

Major-Version = "1" minor-version = "0">

Contacts list application

HREF = "Web-inf / web.xml # Contacts_list_portlet.contactslistportlet"

Major-Version = "1" minor-version = "0">

Contacts List portlet

0

no

Contacts List application

Contacts List portlet

en