Adding and Deleting Resources

Liferay provides a system that allows you to implement permissions for your custom portlets. The first step in implementing permissions is to define all resources and the actions that can be performed on them. Once you’ve done this, you’re ready to register these resource-action pairs in the permissions system. In Liferay, a permission is represented as a resource-action pair. Registering permissions with Liferay is also known as adding resources. This step is the R in the DRAC acronym:

  1. Define all resources and their permissions.

  2. Register all defined resources in the permissions system.

  3. Associate the necessary permissions with resources.

  4. Check permission before returning resources.

This tutorial explains how to both add and delete resources. The Guestbook project is used as an example. You can find it in the Liferay Docs repository here: Liferay Guestbook project. Read on to find out how to add and delete resources!

Before proceeding, make sure you understand these critical terms:

Action: An operation that can be performed by a portal user.

Resource: A generic representation of any portlet or entity in the portal on which an action can be performed.

Permission: An action that can be performed on a resource.

For further explanation and examples, please see the Adding Permissions to Resources tutorial.

Adding a Resource

Resources should be added at the same time that entities are added to the database. To do this, you must invoke Liferay service methods to manage Liferay resources. Adding resources is as easy as calling the addResources(...) method of Liferay’s ResourceLocalServiceUtil class. Here’s the signature of that method:

public void addResources(
    long companyId, long groupId, long userId, String name,
    String primKey, boolean portletActions,
    boolean addGroupPermissions, boolean addGuestPermissions)

Here’s an overview of the parameters of the addResources method:

companyId: the primary key of the entity’s portal instance

groupId: the primary key of the entity’s site

userId: the primary key of the user who’s adding the entity

name: the fully qualified Java class name for the entity being added

primKey: the primary key of the entity

portletActions: a boolean parameter that should be set to true if you’re adding portlet action permissions

addGroupPermissions: a boolean parameter that should be set to true if the default permissions should be added to the current group

addGuestPermissions a boolean parameter that should be set to true if the default permissions should be added to the guest group

Any entity that should have permission-controlled actions must be added as a resource. For example, every time a user adds a new guestbook, call the addResources(...) method to add a corresponding resource to the resource system. Here’s the call from the Guestbook project’s GuestbookLocalServiceImpl class:

resourceLocalService.addResources(
    user.getCompanyId(), groupId, userId, Guestbook.class.getName(),
    guestbookId, false, true, true);

In this example, portletActions is false because a model resource, not a portlet resource, is being added. addGroupPermissions and addGuestPermissions are true since the default permissions should be applied.

You can let your users choose whether to add the default group permissions and/or the default guest permissions for your portlet resources: Liferay has a JSP tag called <liferay-ui:input-permissions /> that you can use to add that functionality. To use it, insert the tag into the appropriate JSP, and the checkboxes appear on that page. Make sure that the tag is inside the appropriate <form> tags.

To see an example of the <liferay-ui:input-permissions /> tag in action, access the form for adding a new web content folder:

Log in to your Liferay Portal instance as an administrator and click on AdminSite AdministrationContent. Then click on Web Content. Then click AddFolder. This form appears:

When you click Add &rrar; Folder to add a new web content folder, this form appears. The <liferay-ui:input-permissions /> is used to add a permissions selector widget to the JSP that renders the form.

The JSP fragment that’s responsible for rendering the permissions selector is this:

<liferay-ui:input-permissions
    modelName="<%= JournalFolder.class.getName() %>"
/>

Notice that this <liferay-ui:input-permissions /> tag appears within an <aui:form /> tag. The <liferay-ui:input-permissions /> tag only makes sense in the context of a form.

Deleting a Resource

When you remove an entity from the database, you should remove permissions that were mapped directly to the entity. This prevents dead resources from taking up space in the database. Remember to delete resources when deleting entities. To do so, call ResourceLocalServiceService’s deleteResource(...) method. Here’s an example from the GuestbookLocalServiceImpl’s deleteGuestbook(...) method:

resourceLocalService.deleteResource(serviceContext.getCompanyId(),
    Guestbook.class.getName(), ResourceConstants.SCOPE_INDIVIDUAL,
    guestbookId);

Great! Now you know how to work with resource permissions!

Customizing Liferay Portal

Plugin Security and PACL

Developing Plugins with Liferay IDE

User Interfaces with AlloyUI

Liferay UI Taglibs

« Adding Permissions to ResourcesExposing the Permission Interface to Users »
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