Creating an Admin JSF Portlet

Similar to what you completed when creating your Guestbook portlet, you’ll complete similar steps to create the Guestbook Admin portlet. You’ll use the New Liferay Portlet wizard, which creates various configuration files such as portlet.xml, liferay-portlet.xml, and liferay-display.xml, or in this case, adds entries to these files for your new admin portlet. In this learning path, you’ll create the new Guestbook Admin portlet, and then examine what’s different in your JSF portlet project.

Using the New Liferay Portlet Wizard

To create your new Guestbook Admin portlet, follow the steps below:

1. Right-click on your guestbook-jsf-portlet project and select New → Liferay JSF Portlet.

2. Accept the defaults on the first screen, which includes setting your portlet class to the GenericFacesPortlet class. Click Next and fill in the Portlet Info section as follows:

   • Name: guestbook-admin

   • Display Name: Guestbook Admin

   • Title: Guestbook Admin

3. Under Resources, make sure the Create view files checkbox is selected and the View folder is set to /views/guestbook-admin.

4. Change the View Template to Liferay Faces Alloy, and then click Next.

5. For the Display Category field, select category.hidden. Then select the Add to Control Panel checkbox.

6. For the Entry Category, select Site Administration - Content. Leave the default Entry Weight at 1.5. Then click Finish.

What happens to your project when a new portlet is added? You’ll examine a few configuration files to find out.

First, open the docroot/WEB-INF/portlet.xml file. Notice the new <portlet> element has been added. Within this element are the <portlet-name>, <display-name>, <portlet-class>, and <portlet-info> sub-elements, which characterize the new Guestbook Admin portlet. You’ll also notice within the <init-param> element, the /views/guestbook-admin/view.xhtml file is set as the default view.

<portlet>
    <portlet-name>guestbook-admin</portlet-name>
    <display-name>Guestbook Admin</display-name>
    <portlet-class>
        javax.portlet.faces.GenericFacesPortlet
    </portlet-class>
    <init-param>
        <name>javax.portlet.faces.defaultViewId.view</name>
        <value>/views/guestbook-admin/view.xhtml</value>
    </init-param>
    ...
    <portlet-info>
        <title>Guestbook Admin</title>
        <short-title>Guestbook Admin</short-title>
        <keywords></keywords>
    </portlet-info>
    ...
</portlet>

The next configuration file you’ll examine is the liferay-portlet.xml file. While the portlet.xml file defines portlet attributes defined by the JSR-286 portlet specification, the liferay-portlet.xml file defines Liferay-specific portlet attributes.

<portlet>
    <portlet-name>guestbook-admin</portlet-name>
    <icon>/icon.png</icon>
    <control-panel-entry-category>
        site_administration.content
    </control-panel-entry-category>
    <control-panel-entry-weight>1.5</control-panel-entry-weight>
    <requires-namespaced-parameters>
        false
    </requires-namespaced-parameters>
    <header-portlet-css>/css/main.css</header-portlet-css>
    <footer-portlet-javascript>
        /js/main.js
    </footer-portlet-javascript>
    <css-class-wrapper>guestbook-admin-portlet</css-class-wrapper>
</portlet>

Notice the <control-panel-entry-category> element. This determines where this portlet resides in the Control Panel. In this instance, you can find it by navigating to Admin → Site Administration → Content. Also notice the <control-panel-entry-weight> element. This value determines where your portlet is located in the Site Administration menu’s list of portlets.

Another configuration file that was edited when you created the Guestbook Admin portlet is the liferay-display.xml file. The following <category> element was added:

<category name="category.hidden">
    <portlet id="guestbook-admin"></portlet>
</category>

This element hides your Guestbook Admin portlet from the list of applications that can be added to a portal page. This is appropriate for the Guestbook Admin portlet because you only want it accessible from the Control Panel for administrators.

Lastly, the wizard created the i18n.properties file to house your Guestbook Admin’s language keys. For your new portlet, you will need to edit this file to define a custom language key for your Guestbook Admin portlet.

Open the docroot/WEB-INF/src/i18n.properties file and replace any existing language keys with the following:

no-guestbooks-yet=No guestbooks yet ...

This new language key will be displayed by the Guestbook Admin portlet when no guestbooks have been created yet.

Now that your Guestbook Admin portlet is created, you’ll need to add some custom services to your GuestbookLocalServiceImpl to allow for editing and deleting guestbooks. You’ll do this next.