Liferay-Blog

In this post you will find a collection of informations concerning the service builder.

Maximum size of a database columns

For each model entity you define in service.xml a seperate database table will be created. By default service builder will set the maximum size of a database column for each of a model's fields to 75 characters. To configure the maximum size take a look at docroot/WEB-INF/src/META-INF/portlet-model-hints.xml. For example if you want to set the maximum size of a field called "name" to 1000 characters you can change:

to

 1000

Force ServiceBuilder to recreate database tables

ServiceBuilder uses the table "servicecomponents" to memorize if certain database tables have already been created. If you want to force ServiceBuilder to recreate database tables for some reason just remove the rows referencing your portlet from database table "servicecomponents".

In order to place your custom portlet to the control panel just add the following lines to your liferay-portlet.xml:

Liferay-Blog
/icon.png
apps
100
de.blogspot.blog.liferay.ControlPanelEntryHandler
...

Here are the explanations taken from liferay-portlet-app_6_2_0.dtd:

control-panel-entry-category: Set the control-panel-entry-category value to "my" to make this portlet available within the My Account administration of the user. Set the value to "apps", "configuration", "sites", or "users" to make it available in the Control Panel under that category. Set the value to "site_administration.configuration", "site_administration.content", "site_administration.pages" or "site_administration.users" to make it available in the Site Administration under that category. Legacy values from previous versions of Liferay will be automatically mapped to the new values: "content" to "site_administration.content", "portal" to "users", and "server" to "apps". [Source]

control-panel-entry-weight: Set the control-panel-entry-weight value to a double number to control the position of the entry within its Control Panel category. Higher values mean that the entry will appear lower in the Control Panel menu. [Source]

control-panel-entry-class: The control-panel-entry-class value must be a class that implements com.liferay.portlet.ControlPanelEntry and is called by the Control Panel to decide whether the portlet should be shown to a specific user in a specific context. [Source]

In your control-panel-entry-class you might for example check whether the user has a certain regular role or not. Here is a example where I check if the user has a regular role called "Liferay-Blog":

package de.blogspot.blog.liferay;

import com.liferay.portal.model.Group;
import com.liferay.portal.model.Portlet;
import com.liferay.portal.model.Role;
import com.liferay.portal.model.User;
import com.liferay.portal.security.permission.PermissionChecker;
import com.liferay.portal.service.RoleLocalServiceUtil;
import com.liferay.portal.util.PortalUtil;
import com.liferay.portlet.BaseControlPanelEntry;

public class ControlPanelEntryHandler extends BaseControlPanelEntry{
 @Override
 public boolean hasAccessPermission(PermissionChecker permissionChecker, Group group, Portlet portlet) throws Exception {
 User user = permissionChecker.getUser();
 Role liferayBlogRole = RoleLocalServiceUtil.getRole(PortalUtil.getDefaultCompanyId(), "Liferay-Blog");
 
 boolean hasAccessPermission = RoleLocalServiceUtil.hasUserRole(user.getUserId(), liferayBlogRole.getRoleId());
 
 return hasAccessPermission;
 }
}

When you try to access your portal and get the following message:

You probably deactivated your default guest site (group). Just run this query on your database ans restart your portal server:

UPDATE group_ SET active = 1 WHERE name = "group_name"

There two cases when the following post becomes interesting:

1. You hook some liferay portlet and want to modify a the portlets configuration jsp without hooking the appropriate struts action.

2. Creating a configuration view for your custom portlet by implementing a ConfigurationAction that extends com.liferay.portal.kernel.portlet.DefaultConfigurationAction and adding the following line to yoor liferay-portlet.xml:

 ...
 /icon.png
 
 de.blogspot.blog.liferay.ConfigurationAction
  
 true
 ...

When using AUI input fields just choose their names according the pattern "preferences--paramName--" and the DefaultConfigurationAction class will handle all parameters and store them in portlet preferences. There is no need to implement any line of code. Example input field:

< aui:input 
name="preferences--hideToolbar--" 
type="checkbox" value="<%= hideToolbar %>" />

Choosing the name "preferences--hideToolbar--" for your input field, the DefaultConfigurationAction will store the "hideToolbar" value in your portlet preferences when the user submits the configuration form.

It is often necessary to define a startup action. For example to verify whether the portal is correctly configured. The following portal properties offer the chance to define custom startup actions which will be executed during portal startup and each deployment of your startup action.

global.startup.events
application.startup.events

Using global.startup.events you can define a action running once while actions defined using application.startup.events run for every portal instance. Since global.startup.events describes an event, intercepting Liferay statup, you will need to define your class in an ext-plugin. Whereas application.startup.events can be defined in a hook-plugin. Your custom startup action has to extend com.liferay.portal.kernel.events.SimpleAction and override a run-method. Example: In portal.properties:

application.startup.events=de.blogspot.blog.liferay.StartupEvent

The appropriate startup class:

package de.blogspot.blog.liferay;

import com.liferay.portal.kernel.events.ActionException;
import com.liferay.portal.kernel.events.SimpleAction;

public class StartupEvent extends SimpleAction{
    @Override
    public void run(String[] ids) throws ActionException {
     System.out.println("Liferay-Blog.blogspot.de");
    }
}

You can add custom display styles to the asset publisher. Let's say you want to add a display style called "MyDisplayTemplate". First of all you add your style's name to the following portal property:

asset.publisher.display.styles=
table,title-list,abstracts,full-content,MyDisplayTemplate

Now you have to create a hook for the asset publisher. Add a jsp called "MyDisplayTemplate.jsp" in "docroot\custom_jsps\html\portlet\asset_publisher\display". Consider that the jsp file's name has to be exact the same as you defined it in portal.properties.

That's it!

In this post you will find a collection of frequently used portal properties.

Remove password reset on first login

passwords.default.policy.change.required=false

Remove terms of use on first login

terms.of.use.required=false

Remove Password reminder question on first login

users.reminder.queries.enabled=false
users.reminder.queries.custom.question.enabled=false

Display styles for the asset publisher (HowTo:Add custom style):

asset.publisher.display.styles=
table,title-list,abstracts,full-content