Liferay - Its all about zeal

Good links

2011-12-13T11:51:00.002+05:30

Implementing UpgradingProcess for your Liferay Portlets!

http://www.liferay.com/web/ryan.park/blog/-/blogs/implementing-upgradingprocess-for-your-liferay-portlets!

Liferay.com, mobile sites and responsive layouts

http://www.liferay.com/es/web/nathan.cavanaugh/blog/-/blogs/liferay-com-mobile-sites-and-responsive-layouts

How to access custom portlet services in velocity template

2011-11-30T15:30:00.001+05:30

By default we will have following property which won't allow us to use serviceLocator variable in velocity templates.

#
# Input a comma delimited list of variables which are restricted from the
# context in Velocity based Journal templates.
#
journal.template.velocity.restricted.variables=serviceLocator

In order to access you need to change that property as below

journal.template.velocity.restricted.variables=

Default findServce(serviceName)  method (what we normally use) searches @ portal level where as other one with extra parameter as shown here  findService(servletContextName, serviceName) searches @ particular portlet level

TO add more to it here are the method signatures & implementations in ServiceLocator.java

        public Object findService(String serviceName) {
                Object bean = null;

                try {
                        bean = PortalBeanLocatorUtil.locate(_getServiceName(serviceName));
                }
                catch (Exception e) {
                        _log.error(e, e);
                }

                return bean;
        }

        public Object findService(String servletContextName, String serviceName) {
                Object bean = null;

                try {
                        bean = PortletBeanLocatorUtil.locate(
                                servletContextName, _getServiceName(serviceName));
                }
                catch (Exception e) {
                        _log.error(e, e);
                }

                return bean;
        }

HoW tO uSe

Suppose i have an custom Entity named MyEntity(defined through service.xml)

#set ($myEntityService = $serviceLocator.findService("", "com.rnd.common.portlet.service.MyEntityLocalService"))

I have a column named count under MyEntity, i can access as below

#set ($count =$myEntityService.getCount())

$count

Hope that helps :)

Please feel free to add your comments. Cheers

How to open HSQL DB tables of Liferay in eclipse

2011-11-29T16:20:00.001+05:30

Earlier i blogged about how to connect to HSQL DB from command prompt using HSQL Database Manager. Now as per request i have blogged to connect to HSQL DB form Eclipse

> Open Data source explorer in Eclipse

> Right click on Database Connections > New, you see screen looking like below as shown in Figure.1

> Type hsql as showing screen below & select HSQLDB - Give a name to your DB connection

Figure.1

> Do as described in Figure.2 below(Point to a Liferay DB which is using HSQL)

Figure.2

> You will see screen like below in Figure.3, once done close this window

Figure.3

NOTE : Here jar file you will using should point to the hsql.jar you have for Liferay installation under tomcat/lib/ext (Below is the screen shot for the same)

> Now you have to give proper Liferay DB name & Database location - Give DB connection other will be populated automatically. Check the save password check box. In my case DB location is

D:\projects\liferay\lr52sp3\liferay-portal-5.2-ee-sp3\data\hsql\lportal

You change this path according to your Liferay instance DB running on HSQL

> You can test the connection as show below

> Click on Next from above screen, you see below screen check for connection profile & click finish

> You will be redirect to Datasource Explorer, which looks like below

Please feel free to add comments.

Cheers :)

How to open HSQL DB tables of Liferay

2011-11-29T01:54:00.001+05:30

Some times we may need come across vague where we have to check few things immediately. Need to make some new version of Liferay up & running quickly, have to check DB for reference

As we all know default DB that Liferay uses in HSQL DB.

Here are the quick steps to how to open HSQL DB table entries in Liferay

Step 1: Download HQSLDB from http://hsqldb.org. Extract into some folder (eg. D:\hsqldb)

Step 2: You can use the HSQLDB DatabaseManager to view this database. Run the following from the command line to invoke the tool.

java -cp D:\hsqldb\lib\hsqldb.jar org.hsqldb.util.DatabaseManager

In the "Connect" dialog, select the following options:
Type: HSQL Database Engine Server
Driver: org.hsqldb.jdbcDriver
URL: jdbc:hsqldb: (In my case i have my Liferay installation @ D:\projects\liferay\lr523\liferay-portal-5.2.3\data\hsql so i have to give path as jdbc:hsqldb:D:/projects/liferay/lr523/liferay-portal-5.2.3/data/hsql/lportal for URL)
User: sa
Password:

Please see the attached image for reference of settings we need to provide

That's it now you should be able to see all the tables. Database interface may not be quite intuitive as other commercial/open-source DB interfaces. Please check the below image for ref

UPDATE : Check the blog for how to connect to HSQL DB using Eclipse

http://btnkumar.blogspot.com/2011/11/how-to-open-hsql-db-tables-of-liferay_29.html

Please feel free to provide feedback if any

Cheers :)

Liferay trunk

2011-11-24T20:16:00.001+05:30

For those who wants to play with liferay trunk - whether to check any new features/want to contribute to Liferay by following thier guidelines & standards

Trunk (How to setup trunk in your local)

http://www.liferay.com/community/wiki/-/wiki/Main/Trunk

Trunk Development Guidelines

http://www.liferay.com/community/wiki/-/wiki/Main/Liferay+Core+Development+Guidelines

Contributing

http://www.liferay.com/community/wiki/-/wiki/Main/how+to+contribute+to+Liferay

Subversion Guidelines

http://www.liferay.com/community/wiki/-/wiki/Main/Subversion+Guidelines

Interesting articles related to setting up Liferay on cloud environments

2011-11-18T16:28:00.001+05:30

Install Liferay on Cloud

http://liferay-themes.sourceforge.net/2011/10/install-liferay-on-cloud/

Jelastic (Rock-solid Java in the Cloud > Auto-scales. Easy to deploy. Runs ANY Java app.)

http://opensourceforlife.blogspot.com/2011/11/deploy-liferay-to-jelastic-cloud.html

http://opensourceforlife.blogspot.com/2011/11/deploy-custom-war-in-liferay-hosted-in.html

http://blog.wasimshaikh.com/2011/11/05/install-liferay-ce-on-cloud/

P.S : Embedded video was created by Wasim

http://blog.jelastic.com/2011/10/31/how-to-deploy-liferay-portal-to-jelastic-cloud/

Fckeditor second time access/set issue in Liferay 5.2.x

2011-09-20T17:01:00.008+05:30

I have faced a typical issue while working with fckeditor & LR version 5.2 EE SP3 (i thought it might be helpful for somebody who will come across similar scenario)

I have a requirement where i need to show fckeditor in a popup - In popup I have a drop drop , depending upon the change in drop down/select box i need to show different contents in fckeditor & other form fields (I am using servceResource to get new content)

When i used fckeditor it was working fine for first time opened popup - on change of drop down/select box & submitting the form working fine, if close the popup after submitting the popup/onchange of select box & try to open popup again and change the dropdrop i was not able to set/get contents of fckeditor.

For getting value from editor using

window.editor.getHTML();

doesn't work all the time.

My scenario was, in popup I wanted to show Editor, then read value, and afterwards post it using Ajax post. So First time it works well.
But second time when i try to get value it says "editor.getHTML function not exists".
So way around was using
document.getElementById('editor').contentWindow.getHTML();

Hope it helps someone.

Here is a good link for how to add fckeditor to portlet

http://www.liferay.com/web/guest/community/wiki/-/wiki/Main/How+to+add+a+wysiwyg+html+editor+to+a+portlet

Liferay new features 6.1

2011-09-20T15:21:00.007+05:30

Indexer post processor hook in Liferay 6.1

http://www.liferay.com/web/jonas.yuan/blog/-/blogs/11643681

Theme Settings and New Advanced Controls

http://www.liferay.com/web/raymond.auge/blog/-/blogs/theme-settings-and-new-advanced-controls

JSP Include Buffer

http://www.liferay.com/web/raymond.auge/blog/-/blogs/jsp-include-buffer

Liferay.com, mobile sites and responsive layouts

http://www.liferay.com/es/web/nathan.cavanaugh/blog/-/blogs/liferay-com-mobile-sites-and-responsive-layouts

Adding the workflow portlets to a page

http://www.liferay.com/web/juan.fernandez/blog/-/blogs/adding-the-workflow-portlets-to-a-page

Mounting Multiple CMIS Repositories on Liferay 6.1

http://www.liferay.com/web/alexander.chow/blog/-/blogs/7670631/maximized

Liferay Spring Contexts

http://www.liferay.com/web/michael.han/blog/-/blogs/10770905

Service Builder vague behavior

2011-07-27T16:17:00.003+05:30

I came across a use case where i have to created Entity with columns which are reserved words in Databases. Initially i didn't observe those are reserved words. If our column name is equal to reserved word service builder tool starts throwing vague errors. I am not able to find where the problem was exactly. My service.xml contains around 20+ tables. Debugging the same sucks & tiresome.

<entity name="MyCustomEntity" table="MyTable" local-service="true" remote-service="false">
        
        <column name="name" db-name="Name" type="String" primary="true" />

        
        <column name="company" db-name="Company" type="String" />
        <column name="default" db-name="Default" type="boolean" />
        <column name="locale" db-name="Locale" type="String" />
        <column name="message" db-name="Message" type="String" />
        <column name="senderAddress" db-name="SenderAddress" type="String" />
        <column name="subject" db-name="Subject" type="String" />
        <column name="type" db-name="Type" type="String" />

        
        <order by="desc">
            <order-column name="name" />
        </order>
    </entity>

If you see above entity portion of my service.xml - the column colored in red is a reserved word that is the one causing the problem.

I have changed that portion to below

If the service builder is behaving in a vague manner & if you are sure about correctness of your entity portion's of service.xml then better have a look at following files

bad_column_names.txt
bad_table_names.txt
bad_alias_names.txt

Might be some of the column names/alias names/table names are handled separately by Service Builder Tool/Databases.

Please feel free to share your comments. Cheers :)

Entity caching disabling - custom portlet

2011-07-22T17:37:00.005+05:30

In some cases we need to disable caching for some Entities in Liferay according to requirements. In one of my project i got a requirement where i got this use case for my plugin portlet

By default Liferay caches all the entities.

First Option : One way to do it is, at entity level in service.xml set cache-enabled attribute to false as below

<entity name="MyModelEntity" table="MyModelEntity" local-service="true" remote-service="true" cache-enabled="false">

Second option: You can disable the same @ portlet level by setting following properties, in your portal.properties underr src folder of your portlet plugin add following porperties (I am not pretty much sure about below one)

value.object.entity.cache.enabled.com.xyz.abc.common.model.MyModelEntity=false;
value.object.finder.cache.enabled.com.xyz.abc.common.model.MyModelEntity=false;

Colored in blue is path to your model entity

I hope it will helpful for some who is looking for similar stuff.

Please feel free to drop your comments

Getting context path in jsp

2011-06-03T11:22:00.000+05:30

Some times while developing plugin portlets/hooking into existing liferay files we may need to get context path in jsps, either to make ajax calls/to navigate to different jsp in same or different folder. Here is how you will get context path in jsps

<%= request.getContextPath()%>

Comments are most welcome, if any body wants to dicuss more on this topic

Blogs & Wiki links

2011-06-01T11:39:00.002+05:30

JSON: Just Some Outstanding News
http://www.liferay.com/web/igor.spasic/blog/-/blogs/9009873

JSON Web Services
http://www.liferay.com/community/wiki/-/wiki/Main/JSON+Web+Services

JSON Serialization
http://www.liferay.com/community/wiki/-/wiki/Main/JSON+Serialization

JSON Service API
http://www.liferay.com/community/wiki/-/wiki/Main/json+service+api

Portlet Communication Configuration
http://www.liferay.com/zh/community/wiki/-/wiki/Main/Portlet+Communication+Configuration

Deployment/Undeployment with Ext plugins environment

2010-09-22T12:28:00.003+05:30

I found some weird behavior when i started working with ext plugins using Liferay version 6.0.5. These problems are related to deployment & undeployment of ext plugins.I thought it might be helpful to beginners of new liferay ext plugins.

You will be having files related to your each ext plugin under following places

Suppose for example i have created a ext plugin named "second"

1) You will be having some jars @ temp folder of your tomcat instance @ \temp\liferay\com\liferay\portal\deploy\dependencies

In my case,
D:\projects\liferay\rNd\liferay-portal-6.0.5\tomcat-6.0.26\temp\liferay\com\liferay\portal\deploy\dependencies\ext-second-ext-util-bridges.jar
D:\projects\liferay\rNd\liferay-portal-6.0.5\tomcat-6.0.26\temp\liferay\com\liferay\portal\deploy\dependencies\ext-second-ext-util-taglib.jar
D:\projects\liferay\rNd\liferay-portal-6.0.5\tomcat-6.0.26\temp\liferay\com\liferay\portal\deploy\dependencies\ext-second-ext-util-java.jar

2) You will be having jars related to each of your ext plugin @ \webapps\ROOT\WEB-INF\lib

In my case,
D:\projects\liferay\rNd\liferay-portal-6.0.5\tomcat-6.0.26\webapps\ROOT\WEB-INF\lib\ext-second-ext-util-bridges.jar
D:\projects\liferay\rNd\liferay-portal-6.0.5\tomcat-6.0.26\webapps\ROOT\WEB-INF\lib\ext-second-ext-util-taglib.jar
D:\projects\liferay\rNd\liferay-portal-6.0.5\tomcat-6.0.26\webapps\ROOT\WEB-INF\lib\ext-second-ext-util-java.jar
D:\projects\liferay\rNd\liferay-portal-6.0.5\tomcat-6.0.26\webapps\ROOT\WEB-INF\lib\ext-second-ext-impl.jar

3) xml file related to each ext plugin will be placed @ \webapps\ROOT\WEB-INF

In my case,
D:\projects\liferay\rNd\liferay-portal-6.0.5\tomcat-6.0.26\webapps\ROOT\WEB-INF\ext-second-ext.xml

4) Service file @ global class path of app server - \lib\ext\ext-second-ext-service.jar. Since this is a shared library/global class path you cannot undeploy when server is in running state.

D:\projects\liferay\rNd\liferay-portal-6.0.5\tomcat-6.0.26\lib\ext\ext-second-ext-service.jar

5) Once your ext plugin is deployed properly you may see some message some thing like below
[ExtHotDeployListener:188] Extension environment for "YOUR_EXT_PLUGIN_NAME" has been applied. You must reboot the server and redeploy all other plugin
s.

Copy the below code to a bat file, change tomcat_home according to your tomcat instance
> you need to send your ext plugin name as parameter , in my case "second"
> before redeploying stop the server & run the following command then redeploy

@echo off
set app_name=%1
if "%app_name%" == "" goto end
set tomcat_home=E:\Liferay605\bundles\tomcat-6.0.26
rmdir /S /Q %tomcat_home%\webapps\%app_name%-ext
del /S /Q %tomcat_home%\lib\ext\ext-%app_name%-ext-service.jar
del /S /Q %tomcat_home%\webapps\ROOT\WEB-INF\lib\ext-%app_name%-ext-util-bridges.jar
del /S /Q %tomcat_home%\webapps\ROOT\WEB-INF\lib\ext-%app_name%-ext-util-taglib.jar
del /S /Q %tomcat_home%\webapps\ROOT\WEB-INF\lib\ext-%app_name%-ext-util-java.jar
del /S /Q %tomcat_home%\webapps\ROOT\WEB-INF\lib\ext-%app_name%-ext-impl.jar
del /S /Q %tomcat_home%\webapps\ROOT\WEB-INF\ext-%app_name%-ext.xml
del /S /Q %tomcat_home%\temp\liferay\com\liferay\portal\deploy\dependencies\ext-%app_name%-ext-util-bridges.jar
del /S /Q %tomcat_home%\temp\liferay\com\liferay\portal\deploy\dependencies\ext-%app_name%-ext-util-taglib.jar
del /S /Q %tomcat_home%\temp\liferay\com\liferay\portal\deploy\dependencies\ext-%app_name%-ext-util-java.jar
:end

Please post your comments/feedback/suggestions on this topic if possible

Where you can find versions of jars included Liferay

2010-09-10T21:17:00.006+05:30

You will find the versions information @ following path

<liferay-portal-source-code>/lib/versions.html

Introducing Friendly URL Routes

2010-09-07T15:10:00.009+05:30

A very good article related to Friendly URLs - Friendly URL Routes feature, which is available from Liferay version 6.0.3+. Its kind of killer feature i can say

http://www.liferay.com/web/connor.mckay/blog/-/blogs/introducing-friendly-url-routes

Liferay control panel changes in 6.0.x

2010-09-01T17:24:00.004+05:30

Here are the first glance changes i observed in control panel of Liferay 6.0.4 which are marked by red arrow (Navigation changes only)

Marked by comparing with "My Account "& "Content" related sections in earlier version (5.2.3)


Marked by comparing with "Portal" & "Server" related sections of earlier version (5.2.3)

Communities/Organizations scope section moved as shown in below (near content section in Liferay 5.2.3)

Now bread crumb looks like below

New bread crumb look

Isn't it cool? :)

How to generate & add certificates using keytool

2010-08-30T18:27:00.024+05:30

Some times you need to use secure http calls depending upon requirements.

At that time if you want to generate a certificate temporarily here are the simple steps for how to generate , put it in JDK & how to configure the same in server (Here i am using tomcat).I got explored a bit while integrating CAS with Liferay.

C:\Documents and Settings\nagendra.busam>keytool -genkey -alias cas-liferay-infocast -keypass changeit -keyalg RSA

Enter keystore password:

What is your first and last name?

[Unknown]: localhost

What is the name of your organizational unit?

[Unknown]: Information systems

What is the name of your organization?

[Unknown]: CIGNEX

What is the name of your City or Locality?

[Unknown]: AHMEDABAD

What is the name of your State or Province?

[Unknown]: GUJARAT

What is the two-letter country code for this unit?

[Unknown]: IN

Is CN=localhost, OU=Information systems, O=CIGNEX, L=AHMEDABAD, ST=GUJARAT, C=IN correct?

[no]: yes

C:\Documents and Settings\nagendra.busam>keytool -export -alias cas-liferay -keypass changeit -file D:\projects\liferay\project-docs\infocast\server_cas_infocast.crt

Enter keystore password:

Certificate stored in file

C:\Documents and Settings\nagendra.busam>keytool -import -file D:\projects\liferay\project-docs\infocast\server_cas_infocast.crt -keypass changeit -keystore C:\Java\jdk1.6.0_19\jre\lib\security\cacerts
Enter keystore password:
keytool error: java.lang.Exception: Certificate not imported, alias <mykey> already exists

Some times you will get above error (here mykey is the default alias - it might have taken already). In that case import the certificate with alias name as below
C:\Documents and Settings\nagendra.busam>keytool -import -alias cas-liferay-infocast -file D:\projects\liferay\project-docs\infocast\server_cas_infocast.crt -keystore C:\Java\jdk1.6.0_19\jre\lib\security\cacerts

Here is my server.xml related change in TOMCAT_HOME/conf

Search for 8443 in that file, you will find some thing like this

<connector clientauth="false" maxthreads="150" port="8443" protocol="HTTP/1.1" scheme="https" secure="true" sslenabled="true" sslprotocol="TLS"></connector>

change above to

<connector clientauth="false" keyalias="cas-liferay-infocast" maxthreads="150" port="8443" protocol="HTTP/1.1" scheme="https" secure="true" sslenabled="true" sslprotocol="TLS"
keystorefile="C:/Documents and Settings/nagendra.busam/.keystore" keystorepass="changeit"
truststorefile="C:/Java/jdk1.6.0_19/jre/lib/security/cacerts"></connector>

Reference link(s)

http://www.sslshopper.com/article-most-common-java-keytool-keystore-commands.html

Liferay: Using JSONObject for Ajax in Plugin Portlet

2010-08-01T02:56:00.001+05:30

Here is a good article about the same

Many times we face situations when we need to use Ajax call from JSP pages. Using jQuery, its very easy to call any JSP through AJAX. You can just call the JSP and show its response from callback into some DOM element.

http://javalibs.blogspot.com/2010/06/liefray-using-jsonobject-for-ajax-in.html

Spring MVC portlet with annotations

2010-08-01T01:46:00.002+05:30

Here is a good blog about Spring MVC portlet implementation using annotations

Java portlet framework is awesome for portal developers. Different portal frameworks are there which supports portlet development in their environment. They also support spring portlet. Spring's portlet support is exposed through Spring MVC interface. Spring provides MVC based portlet development which is so easy and neatly architectured.

http://javalibs.blogspot.com/2010/07/spring-mvc-portlet-with-annotations.html

Liferay 6.0.x related links

2010-07-31T23:41:00.012+05:30

If any body has any good links related to Liferay 6.0.x they are most welcome to post them as comments