All About Liferay

Set 'X-Frame-Options' in Liferay DXP to allow iframe access

2017-06-14T00:34:00.000+05:30

You might have seen below error message in your browser console while including any of the Liferay page url in iframe.

Refused to display 'liferay-url' in a frame because it set 'X-Frame-Options' to 'sameorigin'.

Liferay does not allow access to any of its url using iframe if the request is coming from different domain. If the domain is same you will be able to access Liferay url using iframe.

To resolve this you can either disable check by keeping below property in system-ext.properties.
(Previous to Liferay DXP this property was part of portal.properties but from DXP it has been moved in system.properties).

#
# Set this to true for the portal to send the "X-Frame-Options: DENY" HTTP
# header to protect against clickjacking.
#
# Custom HTTP header values instead of "DENY" can be specified per URL via
# the properties "http.header.secure.x.frame.options.*".
#
http.header.secure.x.frame.options=false

If you disable this property all your Liferay URL will be accessible through iframe and it cause any security issue. This is not a recommended approach to fix this issue.

As a alternative approach you can specify url you want include in iframe using below property in system-ext.properties. For each url you need to create separate property.

#
# If the property "http.header.secure.x.frame.options" is set to true, then
# the portal will iterate through the properties
# "http.header.secure.x.frame.options.*" where the wildcard "*"
# is replaced with an int number starting from 0 and ending with 255 to find
# a pipe (|) delimited URL and HTTP header value pair (e.g. "/|SAMEORIGIN").
#
# Upon finding a matched a URL, the portal will use the custom HTTP header
# value instead of the "DENY" value.
#
# By default, URLs that start with "/" will use a custom HTTP header value
# of "SAMEORIGIN". Specify another URL and HTTP header value with a number
# smaller than 255 to intercept this default behavior.
http.header.secure.x.frame.options.1=/web/guest/home
http.header.secure.x.frame.options.4=/web/test/home
http.header.secure.x.frame.options.5=/servlet-url/servlet-content.

How to read portlet.properties file in Liferay DXP

2017-03-05T03:39:00.001+05:30

In case if you are using portlet.properties file in Osgi module then using below snippet you can read property specified in portlet.properties file.

private static final Configuration _configuration = ConfigurationFactoryUtil
.getConfiguration(ReportUtil.class.getClassLoader(), "portlet");

String fromEmailAddress = _configuration.get("report.form.emailaddress");

Read other posts on Liferay DXP

How To Include Static Resources (CSS/JS/Images) In Liferay OSGI Module
How To Include Custom Portlet In Theme - Liferay DXP
How To Specify External Jar Dependency In Liferay DXP
How To Specify Module Dependencies In Liferay DXP
How To Disable Re-Indexing Of All Journal Article Versions In Liferay DXP

How to include static resources (CSS/JS/Images) in Liferay OSGI module

2017-03-05T03:31:00.000+05:30

As you know development approach has been completely changed with Liferay DXP. In older version of Liferay it was easy to include static resource like CSS , JS and Images as part of portlet but with Liferay DXP you have to do few additional changes to include them.

First of all you need to add webcontext path in your modules bnd file.

Web-ContextPath: /my-custom-portlet

After adding web context path you can add static resource inside META-INF folder.

main\resources\META-INF\resources\css

You can access CSS files added in above folder by adding following line in your code.

<link href="/o/my-custom-portlet/css/my-custom.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />

Similar way you can add and use other static resource like JS and Images.

Read other posts on Liferay DXP

How To Read Portlet.Properties File In Liferay DXP
How To Include Custom Portlet In Theme - Liferay DXP
How To Specify External Jar Dependency In Liferay DXP
How To Specify Module Dependencies In Liferay DXP
How To Disable Re-Indexing Of All Journal Article Versions In Liferay DXP

How to include custom portlet in theme - Liferay DXP

2017-03-05T01:39:00.000+05:30

You can include out of box as well as custom portlet inside theme in Liferay dxp but way has been changed.

By default Liferay uses free marker templates for theme. You can use below snippet to include any custom portlet in theme.

<#assign VOID = freeMarkerPortletPreferences.setValue("portletSetupPortletDecoratorId", "barebone")>

<@liferay_portlet["runtime"]
defaultPreferences="${freeMarkerPortletPreferences}"
portletProviderAction=portletProviderAction.VIEW
portletName="com_custom_portlet_themesearch_ThemeSearchPortlet" />

In above example we have included custom portlet called 'Theme Search Portlet' in theme. You can also change preferences for portlet added in theme by passing preferences object to defaultPreferences attribute.

Read other posts on Liferay DXP

How To Read Portlet.Properties File In Liferay DXP
How to include static resources (CSS/JS/Images) in Liferay OSGI module
How To Specify External Jar Dependency In Liferay DXP
How To Specify Module Dependencies In Liferay DXP
How To Disable Re-Indexing Of All Journal Article Versions In Liferay DXP

How to specify external jar dependency in Liferay DXP

2017-03-05T01:29:00.001+05:30

While doing development in Liferay DXP your module may depends on external jar files . If required jar file is available in Liferay Nexus Repository then you can include them by using BND and Gradle file.

You can see Liferay nexus repository configured in your settings.gradle file under repository tag.

repositories {
maven {
url "https://cdn.lfrs.sl/repository.liferay.com/nexus/content/groups/public"
}
mavenLocal()
}

In case if you dependency on jar file which is not part of this repository then either you can install your jar file in central repository or you can setup your own local repository and install jar file in that (see instruction here to install 3rd party jar in local repository ). You can configure your local maven repository in your gradle file.

By using -includeresource option available in bnd file you can include dependent jar in your module. Also this option supports wildcards as you can see in below example. Here you can see [0-9] it means any version from this range would be picked.

-includeresource:\
@httpclient-[0-9]*.jar,\
@httpcore-[0-9]*.jar,\
@httpmime-[0-9]*.jar,\
@commons-httpclient-[0-9]*.jar,\
@commons-codec-[0-9]*.jar,\

Alternate approach (not recommended)

If you have jar file which is required by almost all the modules of your work space then you can move jar file into lib/ext directory. Copying simply jar file in [lib/ext] folder won't work in Liferay DXP (it used to work in older version of Liferay). You need to specify list of packages in your portal-ext file and listed packages will be accessible to all the modules.

Disadvantage of this approach is that if your external jar has dependency on other jar files then you will have to bring all of them in [lib/ext] folder and you need to mentioned.

#
# Set a comma delimited list of Java packages that are exported to the
# module framework as extra system packages.
#
module.framework.system.packages.extra=\
javax.faces.convert,\
javax.faces.webapp,\
\
#
# Dynamic References
#
\
com.ibm.crypto.provider,\
com.mysql.jdbc,\
com.sun.security.auth.module,\
org.apache.naming.java,\
sun.misc,\
sun.security.provider,\
com.custom.common.service.bean,\
com.custom.common.service.client,\
com.custom.common.service.exception

#
# Set a comma delimited list of headers that are required in cases where the
# dependency analysis of the WAB does not resolve the dependency. This can
# occur when the headers are dynamically loaded using the Java reflection
# API.
#
module.framework.web.generator.headers.DynamicImport-Package=\
com.liferay.portal.kernel.*,\
com.liferay.portal.webserver,\
com.liferay.portal.webserver.*,\
com.sun.el.*,\
javax.el.*,\
javax.portlet.*,\
javax.servlet.*,\
org.apache.el.*,\
org.apache.jasper.*,\
org.apache.taglibs.standard.*,\
org.eclipse.jetty.*,\
\
#
# Dynamic References
#
\
com.liferay.portal.dao.orm.hibernate,\
com.liferay.portal.spring.hibernate,\
com.mysql.jdbc,\
org.apache.naming.java,\
org.hibernate.type,\
org.springframework.orm.hibernate3,\
com.custom.common.service.bean,\
com.custom.common.service.client,\
com.custom.common.service.exception

Note: During testing i have noticed that this approach does not works if we use Liferay workspace plugin 1.0.37 and it works if i use 1.0.40.

You can check Liferay workspace plugin version from settings.gradle file.

How To Include Static Resources (CSS/JS/Images) In Liferay OSGI Module
How To Include Custom Portlet In Theme - Liferay DXP
How To Specify Module Dependencies In Liferay DXP
How To Disable Re-Indexing Of All Journal Article Versions In Liferay DXP

How to specify module dependencies in Liferay DXP

2017-03-05T01:02:00.000+05:30

Best advantages of using OSGi is that you can divide your components in small micro services and as when required module's can use each other's services.

Let say if you have module A which depends on module B then can specify module dependency in bnd.bnd file of module A as below.

compileOnly project(":modules:test-module-a")

You can also limit the services that you want to share with the other modules. In above example module B might be having lots of service but you may want to share only specific service with other modules. You can specify list of packages you want to share with other module using below in bnd.bnd file.

Export-Package: \
com.custom.common.service.bean,\
com.custom.common.service.client,\
com.custom.common.service.exception,\
com.custom.common.service.constants

Read other posts on Liferay DXP

How To Include Static Resources (CSS/JS/Images) In Liferay OSGI Module
How To Include Custom Portlet In Theme - Liferay DXP
How To Specify External Jar Dependency In Liferay DXP
How To Disable Re-Indexing Of All Journal Article Versions In Liferay DXP

How to disable re-indexing of all Journal Article Versions in Liferay DXP

2017-03-05T00:32:00.000+05:30

In case if you have to turn off re indexing all Journal Article version then you can do this by placing below property in portlet-ext properties file. Yes its portlet-ext.properties not portal.properties.

#
# Set this to true to index all article versions. Set this to false to index
# only the last indexable version.
#
journal.articles.index.all.versions=false

In Liferay DXP portlet specific property has been moved to portlet.properties file and all portal specific property can be found in portal.properties.

Any property of portlet.properties can be overridden by portlet-ext.properties similar way we override portal.properties by using portal-ext.properties file.

Multiple out of box modules can have its own portlet.properties file but multiple portlet.properties can be overridden by one property file called portlet-ext.properties.

You need to keep portlet-ext.properties file under below location of app server.

[Liferay_Home]/webapps/root/WEB-INF/classes

Liferay Portlet Session

2016-07-13T17:24:00.000+05:30

Portlet session is similar to HttpSession but both has different implementation.

HttpSession created once for unique visitor in your web application while in Liferay PortletSession is getting created for each portlet placed on page. If there are 4 portlet placed on page then 4 PortletSession would be created for each request.

In Liferay PortletSessionImpl class has implementation for javax.portlet.PortletSession interface. PortletSession internally uses HttpSession to get and set attribute.

There are 2 scope supported in portlet session.

Portlet Scope
Application Scope

Portlet Scope

In PortletSession attributes set using portlet scope would be accessible with in portlet only. If portlet A has set some attribute using portlet scope then no other portlet would be able to access it.

Application Scope

Attribute set using application scope would be accessible across all portlets. If you have set some attribute from portlet A then you would be able to access this attribute in all other portlets as well.

How it works ?

If you see implementation class for PortletSession interface than you will get idea how multiple sessions are getting created for portlet scope.

public void setAttribute(String name, Object value, int scope) {
        if (name == null) {
            throw new IllegalArgumentException();
        }

        if (_invalid) {
            throw new IllegalStateException();
        }

        if (scope == PortletSession.PORTLET_SCOPE) {
            name = _getPortletScopeName(name);
        }

        _session.setAttribute(name, value);
    }

Above method is used to set attribute in portlet session. If you see if scope it portlet scope then it adds namespace before then attribute name while this is not the case with application scope. Here namespace is combination of portlet name and plid.

For example if portletName='47' , plid ='1234 ' and portlet scope is selected then attribute name would be like 'javax.portlet.p.47_LAYOUT_1234?attributeName'.

If scope is application then attribute will be directly stores in HttpSession (_session is object of HttpSession).

Useful Oracle Queries and Commands

2016-06-13T16:55:00.001+05:30

In this blog post i would try to cover few of the import queries or commands of oracle.

Export/Import database

If you want to export/import database then you can use below commands from sql command line.

To start sql command from command prompt hit sqlplus command. You need to login with valid credentials before you execute any commands.

By following way you can use export command.

exp userid=system/password@XE schemas=SCHEMA_NAME dumpfile=DUMP_NAME.dmp logfile=LOG_FILE_NAME.log

or

exp userid=system/password@XE owner=SCHEMA_NAME file=DUMP_NAME.dmp

To import you can use below commands.

impdp system/root@XE schemas=SCHEMA_NAME dumpfile=SCHEMA_NAME_DMP.dmp logfile=client.log

or

imp userid=system/root@XE full=N IGNORE=Y FILE=C:/Users/SCHEMA_NAME_DMP.dmp

To know difference between exp/imp and expdp/impdp please follow below link.

Original Export and Import Versus Data Pump Export and Import

Unlock system user in oracle

To unlock system user run following commands.

C:\>sqlplus / as sysdba

SQL*Plus: Release 10.2.0.1.0 - Production on Mon May 26 15:53:22 2008

Copyright (c) 1982, 2005, Oracle. All rights reserved.

Connected to:
Oracle Database 10g Express Edition Release 10.2.0.1.0 - Production

SQL> alter user system account unlock;

User altered.

SQL>

Change password for system user

SQL> connect / as sysdba;

SQL> alter user system identified by <new_password>;

Reset password

If password is expired then using below commands you can extend the default limit for password.

Login as a system user and execute below query.

ALTER PROFILE DEFAULT LIMIT PASSWORD_LIFE_TIME UNLIMITED;

Popular Asset Portlet Liferay

2015-06-20T01:51:00.000+05:30

As name suggest this app will help users to find out popular assets of Liferay. This app supports Journal Article , Blogs , Document and Media .
User can configure any of the asset listed above and they can find out most viewed , most rated , most commented and recently added asset in Liferay.

For asset like Journal article user can also track where Journal Article is configured. User can check preview of Journal Article as well.

Supported Configuration

Maximum Article To Display

User can decide how many record they want to see. i.e if user set this it 10 then application will display popular 10 records for selected asset.

Asset

From the new version user can configuration others assets like Blogs , Document media and Wiki along with Journal Article.

Scope

There are 2 options supported for scope field 1) Company and 2) Current

1) Company
- It means application will gather information from current portal instance . Application will gather information from all the sites available under current company.

2) Current
- If user mark Current for scope field then assets from current site will be displayed to user.

View

There are two option supported for this field 1) Table and 2) Chart.

1) If user select 1 st option as table then all information will be displayed in tabular manner.

2) If user set view as chart then all information will be presented to user in form of chart.

Here are few screen shot to understand more about this application.

Table View

Liferay Popular Asset Portlet

Chart View

Chart view - Liferay Popular Asset Portet

Chart View - Liferay Popular Asset Portlet

Configuration Screen

Liferay Search Container

2014-12-23T12:34:00.000+05:30

I have posted couple of articles related to sort search container results in Liferay.

You can refer to my blog post Orderable Search Container In Liferay to sort database results using Liferay search container.

If you want to sort results coming from solr using search container then refer to this blog post Sort Solr Results Using Search Container.

But what if you don't have any database/solr results and still you want to user Liferay search container ? . For example let say if you List<Long> and you want to display the same using Liferay search container.

Read Portlet Preferences in Liferay

2014-12-20T00:48:00.000+05:30

We know how to get preferences of current portlet from request object (renderRequest.getPreferences()) but some time we have requirement to read preferences of remote portlet placed on some other page.

Using PortletPreferenceLocalServiceUtil we can read preference of any portlet. We just need to take care while passing parameter like OWNER_ID ,OWNER_TYPE , Plid , and Default Preferences.

If the preferences are unique per group

OWNER_ID : PortletKeys.PREFS_OWNER_TYPE_GROUP

OWNER_TYPE : If the preferences are unique per group (Shared preferences between portlet placed on multiple page within same group) then pass groupId as OWNER_TYPE.

Plid : 0 (PortletKeys.PREFS_PLID_SHARED).

PortletId : PortletId of remote portlet.

If the preferences are unique per layout

OWNER_ID : PortletKeys.PREFS_OWNER_TYPE_LAYOUT

OWNER_TYPE : 0

Plid : Pass Plid of page where remote portlet is placed. If Blog portlet is placed on "/home" page then pass plid of "/home" page.

PortletId : PortletId of remote portlet.

Below is the example to read preferences of remote portlet.

In case if you are using any other method of PortletPreferecesLocalServiceUtil which returns com.liferay.portal.model.PortletPreferences instead of javax.portlet.PortletPreferences then using below code you can do the converstion from com.liferay.portal.model.PortletPreferences to javax.portlet.PortletPreferences.

Content Filtering By User Custom Attribute in Asset Publisher

2014-09-26T12:46:00.000+05:30

This post will help you to configure assets based on user's custom attribute.

Steps are already available in LPS-19681 but in case if you face any difficulty while configuring the same you can follow this post.

Scenario

Filter content based on user's custom attribute. If user A logged in from India then asset publisher to display contents for India. If user B logged in from USA then asset publisher to display content from USA.

Step 1 :

Create custom attribute for user with the type Text and name it as "Location".

Step 2 :

Set "India" to location user custom attribute for user A.

Set "USA" to location user custom attribute for user B.

Step 3:

Now navigate to global scope . From site menu move to global site.

Create vocabulary called "Location" in global scope. Create category "India" & "USA" inside Location vocabulary.

Liferay Categories Screen in Control Panel

Step 4 :

Create some web content or documents inside site (not global site) in which you want to configure asset publisher .

Categorize few of the contents in "India" category and few of them in "USA" category.

Step : 5

Now place asset publisher on page and click on configuration icon.

Specify "Location" in Displayed assets must match these custom user profile attributes.

Liferay Asset Publisher Configuration

That's it. Now log in using different account and verify contents.

Portlet Location Tracker - v1.1 Released for Liferay 6.2 and Liferay 6.1

2014-09-20T10:37:00.000+05:30

I am pleased to share that Portlet Location Tracker v1.1 has been released .

New release of Portlet Location Tracker now supports Liferay 6.2 as well. In the v1.1 of Portlet Location Tracker we have added functionality to remove portlet from page.

Now user can remove any portlet from page in one shot using Portlet Location Tracker.

No need to browse pages to remove portlet just use Portlet Location Tracker , search for your portlet and from results remove from portlet from desired page.

Portlet Location Tracker - Dashboard

Thank you ,
Jitendra Rajput
Consultant @ CIGNEX Datamatics

Liferay - Override ServiceImpl Using Ext

2014-09-12T19:39:00.000+05:30

It is recommended to implement hook to override any portal service but there are certain limitation if you are overriding portal service using hook.

Override a Portal Service using Hook

You won't be able to access any class of portal-impl.jar inside hook so its better to use ext-plugin in such case.

This post will describe how to override any service impl class using ext.

First of all create ext-plugin. Inside ext-impl/src create META-INF folder.

Create ext-spring.xml file. You might have question why we have to create xml file with this specific name. To know more on this you need to check spring.configs property of portal.properties file.

Check at the bottom of this property. You will see ext-spring.xml so Liferay will look for this xml to override any class injected through spring.

If you don't want to override default ext-spring.xml then for your custom spring configuration you can copy spring.configs property from portal.properties file and paste it inside portal-ext.properties.
Append name of your custom-spring.xml at the end of this property.

To override method of MBMessageLocalServiceImpl add following entry inside ext-spring.xml.

<bean id="com.liferay.portlet.messageboards.service.MBMessageLocalService" class="com.custom.portlet.messageboards.service.impl.CustomMBMessageLocalServiceImpl" />

You can get bean defination from spring configuration files mentioned in spring.configs property.
For MBMessageLocalServiceImpl bean details are available inside portal-spring.xml file.

Similar way to override PortalLDAPImporterUtil you need look into ldap-spring.xml for bean defination.

Now next thing is to create CustomMBMessageLocalServiceImpl which must extend MBMessageLocalServiceImpl .

public class CustomMBMessageLocalServiceImpl extends MBMessageLocalServiceImpl

Now you can override any method of MBMessageLocalServiceImpl inside CustomMBMessageLocalServiceImpl .

You only need to write specific method you want to override. No need to copy entire code of original class.

Create Portlet URL In Liferay

2014-09-05T17:30:00.000+05:30

Here is the example by which you can retrieve URL of portlet which is reside on another Page.
Let say if you have Portlet A on page A and there is one more portlet called Portlet B on some other page that you dont know

Option 1

Option 2

Document Download Tracking - Check who downloaded your document in Liferay

2014-05-22T11:23:00.001+05:30

Document Download Tracking

My 2nd app Document Download Log Hook is now available on Liferay market place . Its a common requirement where we want to track document download activities. This can be done with any third party analytic tool as well but some times we can use Liferay persisted data itself to track downloads.

Document download tracker can used as alternative to any analytic tool. It can be integrated with document library to track document downloads. Once you enable this app it will automatically persist all the information about who downloaded document. App will store information like User name and Remote IP address . This app has functionality clear logs for any document. User can also clear download logs for all document if they wish.

Document Download Logs

Document Download Log Hook is available for both Liferay 6.2 and Liferay 6.1.

There few steps you need to follow to use this application. Here are deployment steps.

Deployment steps for tomcat

1) Stop application server. Download document-download-tracking-hook-service jar from bundle and place this service jar to [SERVER]/lib/ext . Set below property in portal-ext file.

# # This property is used to enable/disable document download tracker app.

document.download.logs.enabled=true

2) Place document-download-tracking-hook war in [Server]/deploy directory

3) Once you are done with above steps next thing is to restart your server.

Deployment steps for JBoss (7.1)

1) Stop application server. Download document-download-tracking-hook-service jar from bundle and place this service jar to [server]/modules/com/liferay/portal/main folder .

2) Navigate to [server]/modules/com/liferay/portal/main folder and add below entry in module.xml.

3) Set below property in portal-ext file.

# # This property is used to enable/disable document download tracker app.

document.download.logs.enabled=true

4) Place document-download-tracking-hook war in [Server]/deploy directory

5) Once you are done with above steps next thing is to restart your server.

How to use this application

1) If the logs are enabled and if you download any document then it will be displayed in log .

2) If any logged in user download document then it will display name of the user along with IP Address and time of download.

3) If any non-authenticated user download document in that case it will stored on the name of Guest.

4) You can view download logs from Control Panel--> Document Library . Select any document and click on Download Logs action.

5) You can clear logs for individual document as well for all documents.

Below is the link to download application from Liferay market place.

https://www.liferay.com/marketplace/-/mp/application/37930491

You can report issues/suggestion related to this app by commenting on this post or you can post on support page of this blog.
At the end don't forget to rate this app on Liferay Market Place.

Thank you,
Jitendra Rajput

Portlet Location Tracker - Find Where your portlet is placed

2014-05-20T22:39:00.000+05:30

Portlet Location Tracker

My first app Portlet Location Tracker is now available on Liferay market place. This app will help developers as well as end user to locate the portlets placed on different pages. App will search in entire portal for the portlet you are looking for and display possible results. For big portal its difficult for Developers/QA and end users to locate the page. This application will help theme to track where portlet is placed .

Portlet Location Tracker

Here is the description about the functionalities available in Location Tracker Portlet

1) Find portlet

By default app will display all the portlets available in company except system portlets.
Entire list of portlet will be displayed using drop down
User can search for page locations by selecting any of the portlets from list.
User can go to actual page as well from results it self.
In results application will display more information about page (private or public page). It will also display group name in which page belongs.

2) Export to Excel

User can export search results in to Excel file . For Export to Excel application uses Jasper report.

You can download this app from Liferay market place below is the to download this app.

https://www.liferay.com/marketplace/-/mp/application/37835124

You can report issues/suggestion related to this app on support page of this blog.
At the end don't forget to rate this app on Liferay Market Place.
Thank you ,
Jitendra Rajput

Liferay - Get User Based On Expando Value

2014-04-24T18:17:00.000+05:30

Use below code snippet if you want to search users based on expando value. In below snippet ColumnName is the name of custom attribute (expando attribute) and data is expando value.

One more point i would like to highlight here in below snippet we are looking for exact value of custom attribute . In few cases you might not have exact value of custom attribute in that case you can alter dynamic query and instead of eq you can use like query. For more information on dynamic query you check this post.

Share Services Between Plugin Portlets In Liferay

2014-04-18T20:47:00.000+05:30

Sharing services between plugin portlets is very easy in Liferay. Usually people place services jar manually when they want to access any other portlet's services.

Here is the automated where liferay will take of the dependent service jar. You just need to name the dependent portlet's name.

Let say for your library management portlet you want to access services of student portlet. In liferay-plugin-package.properties file you need to enter below entry.

File liferay-plugin-package.properties you can locate inside WEB-INF folder.

required-deployment-contexts=\
student-portlet

When you deploy library-portlet you will see below logs. As you can see in the logs before deploying library-portlet it will check for student-portlet.
It will build student-portlet first and then copy service jar from student-portlet into library-portlet.

18 Apr 2014 05:23:35:866 INFO [HotDeployEvent:109] Plugin library-portlet requires student-portlet
18 Apr 2014 05:23:36:111 INFO [HotDeployImpl:178] Deploying library-portlet from queue
18 Apr 2014 05:23:36:112 INFO [PluginPackageUtil:1033] Reading plugin package for library-portlet
18 Apr 2014 05:23:36:928 INFO [PortletHotDeployListener:294] Registering portlets for library-portlet
18 Apr 2014 05:23:37:079 INFO [PortletHotDeployListener:454] 1 portlet for library-portlet is available for use

There are other usage properties available inside liferay-plugin-package.properties file
(portal-dependency-jars and portal-dependency-tlds).
By using this properties you can use jars and tlds available Liferay portal.

JSON Serialization in Liferay

2014-04-17T12:34:00.000+05:30

Many times we have requirement to convert Liferay service response or any list into JSON object. Most of the time we are doing this manually.

There are other ways as well by which we can convert List into JSON string.
Service builder has support for JSON serialization,too. The json-enabled attribute of entity tag specifies whether or not the entity should be annotated for JSONserialization.
By default, if the remote-service value is true, then thejson-enabled value is true.
Column tag has the same attribute, json-enabled.
It specifies whether or not the column should be annotated for JSON serialization. By default, if the json-enabled value in the entity element is true, then the json-enabled value in the column element is true.

json enabled is true for enttity TestJson so all the column tags will have by default json-enabled as true.
In case if you want to exclude any property to not to appear when you serialize then you can set json-enabled as false. For email column json-enabled is set to false.

build-service and check TestJSONModelImpl class. For the field json-enabled is true you will see @JSON annotation. For excluded fields you will see @JSON(include = false) .

Now you can easily convert your list returned using Liferay services into JSON format.

JSONSerializer jsonSerializer = JSONFactoryUtil.createJSONSerializer();
String json = jsonSerializer.serialize(list);

You can also exclude fields you don't need in JSON.

Same way you can use serialize OOB data as well like user.

List<User> userList = UserLocalServiceUtil.getUsers(-1, -1);
String json = JSONFactoryUtil.looseSerialize(userList);

By default collections are excluded from serialization . You can include them using below way.
String json = JSONFactoryUtil.looseSerialize(userList,"organizations")

Sort Solr Search Result

2014-04-12T19:43:00.000+05:30

Below snippet will help you to sort solr search results.

Few things i would like to highlight about solr result sorting.
You can not sort tokenized field i mean if you have defined your solr field with the type text or textToTight.
You can sort the field which have type string . You can create dynamic fields easily in solr.
Add below entry in schema.xml and solr will automatically create field with the type string.

<dynamicField name="*_sortable" type="string" indexed="true" multiValued="false" stored="true" />

If you use any field with suffix _sortable then solr will automatically create field if it is not exist.

Liferay - Sort Search Container Result

2014-04-12T19:22:00.001+05:30

To sort liferay search container result follow below steps.

1) Create liferay search container in your JSP.

2) Create search container in your controller and set result in search container object.

3) Get sorted results using dynamic query.

Connect Liferay with SAP using SAP JCO Connector

2013-08-06T19:36:00.000+05:30

This post will elaborate you on how to connect your Liferay portal with SAP Database.

Many times we want need data from SAP database either using web service call or using any third party connector.

In this post we are going to use JCOconnector to connect Liferay portal with SAP Database.

Prerequisite

1) First download SAP JCO Connector for your operating system from http://service.sap.com/connectors.
If you are using windows then make sure you download correct version of sapjco dll and jar.
For windows you need to place sapjco dll inside Windows\System32 directory

2) Next thing is configure sapjco3.jar inside Lifeary portal.

Place this jar inside [LIFERAY_TOMCAT]/lib/ext.

Liferay SAP Integration

Following diagram will give you some idea on integrating Liferay with SAP. [Image 1 Diagram]

SAP Java Connector (SAP JCo) is a middle ware component that supports communication with the SAP Server in both directions: inbound calls (Java calls ABAP) and outbound calls (ABAP calls Java).

In this post we will only try to understand inbound calls on how java calls ABAP (SAP)

There are basically 3 steps required to connect with this SAP System.

Defining Destination
- Define and prepare property file with all connection details.
- Connection details includes
  1. Host Name
  2. System Number
  3. Client Details
  4. User Name
  5. Password

Establishing Connection
- In the 1 st step we created property file with all connection details.
- In this step we are going to use property file to establish connection with SAP System.

Executing Function
- The RFCs enable you to call and execute predefined functions in a remote system.
- The RFCs manage the communication process, parameter transfer, and error handling.

Example

I have created sample portlet in LR 6.1 GA2 to connect liferay with SAP database.
Portlet will display success message when connection is successfully done.
Download and play with this portlet. Here is the download link.
Following are some portlet screens that will help you to understand this sample portlet.

Click on Test SAP Connection button to connect with SAP System.
Once Connection is successfully done you will see following screen.

Define all connection related properties inside portlet.properties file of this sample portlet.

Thank You,

Jitendra Rajput