Invoking Liferay Services From Scripts

Many scripting scenarios require invoking Liferay DXP’s services.

To illustrate the correct syntax for interacting with Liferay services, consider a simple example that uses the UserLocalService API to retrieve a list of users and print their names to Liferay’s log file. We’ll initially implement the example in Java pseudo-code:

import com.liferay.portal.kernel.model.User;
import com.liferay.portal.kernel.service.UserLocalServiceUtil;
import java.util.List;

...
            
int userCount = UserLocalServiceUtil.getUsersCount();
List<User> users = UserLocalServiceUtil.getUsers(0, userCount);

for (User user:users) {
    System.out.println("User Name: " + user.getFullName());
}

...

Liferay DXP’s script engine only supports Groovy by default. In later versions, support may be added for other scripting languages.

Groovy

Groovy is based on Java, and code written in Java also runs in Groovy. This means we can execute the exact same code from our Java example without any changes:

import com.liferay.portal.kernel.model.User;
import com.liferay.portal.kernel.service.UserLocalServiceUtil;
import java.util.List;

int userCount = UserLocalServiceUtil.getUsersCount();
List<User> users = UserLocalServiceUtil.getUsers(0, userCount);

for (User user:users) {
    System.out.println("User Name: " + user.getFullName());
} 

Of course, we could make this somewhat Groovier by simplifying the program as follows:

import com.liferay.portal.kernel.service.UserLocalServiceUtil

userCount = UserLocalServiceUtil.getUsersCount()
users = UserLocalServiceUtil.getUsers(0, userCount)
for (user in users){
    System.out.println("User Name: " + user.getFullName())
}

Liferay’s services can be easily accessed from the script console. Next, let’s look at some practical uses for Liferay DXP’s script engine.

Related Topics

Running Scripts From the Script Console

Leveraging the Script Engine in Workflow

Using Liferay’s Script Engine