Integrating the Back-end

Building the Web Front-End

Step 4 of 11

To use your Service Builder-generated back-end in your front-end, you must tell your front-end project that the back-end exists and where to find it.

For the web module to access the generated services, you must make it aware of the API and service modules:

1. Open guestbook-web’s build.gradle file and add these dependencies:

   compileOnly project(":modules:guestbook:guestbook-api")
   compileOnly project(":modules:guestbook:guestbook-service")
   

2. Save the file. Right-click on the guestbook-web project and select Gradle → Refresh Gradle Project.

3. Now you must add references to the Service Builder services you need. To do this, add them as class variables with @Reference annotations on their setter methods. Open GuestbookPortlet and add these references to the bottom of the file:

   @Reference
   private GuestbookEntryLocalService _guestbookEntryLocalService;
   
   @Reference
   private GuestbookLocalService _guestbookLocalService;
   

   Note that it’s Liferay’s code style to add class variables this way. The @Reference annotation causes Liferay’s OSGi container to inject references to your generated services so you can use them.

4. Press Ctrl-Shift-O to add the import you need:

   • org.osgi.service.component.annotations.Reference

Now you’re ready to begin building your front-end.