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Chapter 3. Developing Portlets with the Bridge

3.1. Excluding Attributes from the Bridge Request Scope
3.2. Supporting PortletMode Changes
3.3. Navigating to a mode's last viewId
3.4. General Error Handling
3.5. Custom Ajax Error Handling
3.6. Communication Between Your Portlets
3.6.1. Storing Components in PortletSession.APPLICATION_SCOPE
3.6.2. Using the PortletSession
3.7. Direct Linking to Portlet/JSF Pages Using h:outputink

This chapter demonstrates common development tasks described by the 329 specification.

When your application uses request attributes on a per request basis and you do not want that particular attribute to be managed in the extended bridge request scope, you must use the following configuration in your faces-config.xml. Below you will see that any attribute namespaced as foo.bar or any attribute beginning with foo.baz(wildcard) will be excluded from the bridge request scope and only be used per that application's request.



         <application>
          <application-extension>
              <bridge:excluded-attributes>
                  <bridge:excluded-attribute>foo.bar</bridge:excluded-attribute>
                  <bridge:excluded-attribute>foo.baz.*</bridge:excluded-attribute>
              </bridge:excluded-attributes>
          </application-extension>
         </application>
          

A PortletMode represents a distinct render path within an application. There are three standard modes: view, edit, and help. The bridge's ExternalContext.encodeActionURL recognizes the query string parameter javax.portlet.faces.PortletMode and uses this parameter's value to set the portlet mode on the underlying portlet actionURL or response. Once processed it then removes this parameter from the query string. This means the following navigation rule causes one to render the \edit.jspx viewId in the portlet edit mode:



         <navigation-rule>
            <from-view-id>/register.jspx</from-view-id>
            <navigation-case>
              <from-outcome>edit</from-outcome>
              <to-view-id>/edit.jspx?javax.portlet.faces.PortletMode=edit</to-view-id>
           </navigation-case>
         </navigation-rule>
          

By default a mode change will start in the mode's default view without any (prior) existing state. One common portlet pattern when returning to the mode one left after entering another mode (e.g.. view -> edit -> view) is to return to the last view (and state) of this origin mode. The bridge will explicitly encode the necessary information so that when returning to a prior mode it can target the appropriate view and restore the appropriate state. The session attributes maintained by the bridge are intended to be used by developers to navigate back from a mode to the last location and state of a prior mode. As such a developer needs to describe a dynamic navigation: "from view X return to the last view of mode y". This is most easily expressed via an EL expression. E.g.



         <navigation-rule>
           <from-view-id>/edit.jspx*</from-view-id>
           <navigation-case>
             <from-outcome>view</from-outcome>
             <to-view-id>#{sessionScope['javax.portlet.faces.viewIdHistory.view']}</to-view-id>
           </navigation-case>
         </navigation-rule>
          

The following configuration may be used to handle exceptions. This is also useful for handling session timeout and ViewExpiredExceptions.

Pay attention to the location element. It must contain the /faces/ mapping to work properly.



         <error-page>
            <exception-type>javax.servlet.ServletException</exception-type>
            <location>/faces/error.xhtml</location>
         </error-page>
         <error-page>
            <exception-type>javax.faces.application.ViewExpiredException</exception-type>
            <location>/faces/error.xhtml</location>
         </error-page>
      

By default, error handling is sent to a standard servlet page for Ajax requests. To handle the error inside the portlet, use the following javascript:



         <script type="text/javascript">
           A4J.AJAX.onError = function(req,status,message){
             window.alert("Custom onError handler "+message);
           }

           A4J.AJAX.onExpired = function(loc,expiredMsg){
             if(window.confirm("Custom onExpired handler "+expiredMsg+" for a location: "+loc)){
               return loc;
             } else {
               return false;
             }
           }
         </script>
      

Also, add the following to web.xml. Read more about these settings here Request Errors and Session Expiration Handling



       <context-param>
        <param-name>org.ajax4jsf.handleViewExpiredOnClient</param-name>
        <param-value>true</param-value>
       </context-param>
      

There are roughly 4 different ways to send messages, events, and parameters between portlets which are contained in different ears/wars or contained in the same war. The Portlet Container does not care if you have 2 portlets in the same war or if they are separated, because each portlet has a different HttpSession.

Of course, with the Portlet 2.0 spec, the recommended way to share a parameter or event payload between 2 or more portlets are the Section 2.4.2, “Public Render Parmaeters” and Section 2.4.1, “Sending and Receiving Events” mechanisms. This allows you to decouple your application from surgically managing objects in the PortletSession.APPLICATION_SCOPE.

But, if these do not meet your usecase or you have a different strategy, you can use one of the following methods.

For linking to any JSF/Facelets page within your portlet web application, you may use the following.

      <h:outputLink value="#{facesContext.externalContext.requestContextPath}/home.xhtml">
        <f:param name="javax.portlet.faces.ViewLink" value="true"/>
        navigate to the test page
      </h:outputLink>