You can share widgets with other Sites by embedding an instance of a widget running on your Site into another website, such as Facebook. This opens up a whole new avenue of exposure to your web site that you would not have had otherwise. In fact, this is how all those Facebook games work.
Figure 1: The Sharing tab in your widget's Configuration menu lets you share your widget in a variety of ways.
To share one of your widgets, open the Configuration dialog box from
the widget’s Options icon (
) and
select the Sharing tab. There are five sub-tabs under sharing: Any Website,
Facebook, OpenSocial Gadget, and Netvibes.
Any Web Site
Copy and paste the provided snippet of JavaScript code into the web site where you want to add the widget. That’s all you need to do. When a user loads the page on the other website, the code pulls the relevant widget from your Site and displays it.
You can add any widget as a Facebook app. To do this, you must first get a developer key. A link for doing this is provided to you in the Facebook tab. You must create the application on Facebook and get the API key and canvas page URL from Facebook. Once you’ve done this, you can copy and paste their values into the Facebook tab. Save the configuration and navigate back to the Facebook tab in Liferay DXP. You’re given the Callback URL, which you can copy and paste into Facebook. When opening your app in Facebook, the correct callback URL is used to render the application. You can also enable the Allow users to add [application-name] to Facebook. Then you can navigate to your app’s Options menu and select Add to Facebook.
OpenSocial Gadget
OpenSocial comprises a container and a set of APIs for social networking and other web applications. Liferay DXP can serve up applications to be used as OpenSocial Gadgets on any OpenSocial-compatible pages.
To serve a Liferay widget on an OpenSocial platform, copy and paste the provided gadget URL and add it to the appropriate configuration page of the OpenSocial platform you’re using. Your Liferay instance serves that widget directly onto that platform’s page. The URL provided is unique to the specific instance of the widget, so you could serve multiple instances of the same widget as different OpenSocial Gadgets.
From the Sharing tab in the Configuration menu, you can also enable the selector Allow users to add [application-name] to an OpenSocial platform. Click Save and revisit the Options button of your widget. A new button appears named Add to an OpenSocial Platform. When selecting this new button, the URL is provided for sharing the widget to an OpenSocial platform.
Netvibes
Netvibes offers a similar environment where users can log in, create their own personal dashboard, and add customizable widgets to it. To set up Netvibes support for a widget, enable the Allow users to add [application-name] to Netvibes pages selector. You can then use the provided URL to create a custom Netvibes widget based on the instance of the Liferay widget that you’re using.
Next, you’ll learn how to set permissions for Liferay applications.