As part of Liferay’s OpenSocial integration, the OpenSocial Gadget Editor is included with Liferay Portal. The gadget editor is a complete development environment for gadgets, providing syntax highlighting, preview functionality, undo/redo options, and built in tabs for working on multiple gadgets at the same time. You can also organize and manage gadgets easily using the editor’s file manager. All of this gives you the convenience of creating and improving your gadgets right from within Liferay Portal.
Within the editor, each gadget’s XML file has a drop-down menu allowing you to close, rename, delete, publish, or unpublish the gadget, or to simply show the gadget’s URL. The Publish button directs you to a screen, similar to the OpenSocial Gadget Publisher, allowing you to publish your gadget. Gadgets published through the editor are stored in the site’s Document and Media Library. The Show URL button gives you the URL so that the gadget may be shared with other sites. These options offer a user-friendly and easy to use testing station for enhancing the gadgets on your sites.
Figure 1: The drop-down menu can be easily found to the right of your XML file.
Note: When you publish a new gadget, remember that your Liferay Portal installation is the new host when specifying the gadget’s URL.
As a brief tutorial, we’ll demonstrate creating a new gadget and publishing the gadget to Liferay using the gadget editor. Let’s get started!
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Navigate to Site Administration → Content and select OpenSocial Gadget Editor.
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In the editor, create a gadget from scratch or copy in a gadget’s XML and edit the code as desired.
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Click the floppy disk button to save your new gadget XML. Once you’ve typed your gadget’s desired name, click the check mark. Make sure to attach the
.xmlsuffix to the end of your gadget’s name; otherwise, the gadget will not save.Figure 2: It is easy to insert gadget content into Liferay's *OpenSocial Gadget Editor* and save it as an OpenSocial gadget.
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Select the Preview tab from the toolbar and a preview of your gadget appears.
Figure 3: The *Preview* tab displays what your gadget would look like if it was added to a Liferay page.
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Publish your gadget for portal-wide use by selecting the drop-down menu next to the gadget’s name and clicking Publish. A Publish Gadget screen opens up, showing your gadget’s URL and categories to select for your gadget.
Figure 4: A *Publish Gadget* window displays your gadget's URL and a host of categories for you to consider for your gadget.
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Choose a category and click Save.
Your new gadget is now available for portal-wide use!
The OpenSocial Gadget Editor allows you to create and improve gadgets within the comfort of your own Liferay Portal instance. You can facilitate the social interactions on your sites and increase your portal content’s popularity across your social network by leveraging the power of OpenSocial gadgets and the gadget editor.
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