Adding Actions to Your Managed Beans

Just as you added action methods in the Creating Managed Beans to Use Services learning path, you’ll do the same for creating action methods for your action buttons. You’ll need to add methods that edit and delete entries. The Permissions button will be configured slightly different, and won’t require an action method in a managed bean. You’ll start with adding entry entity related methods.

1. Add the following delete(Entry) method to your EntryBacking bean:

    public void delete(Entry entry) {
   
        try {
            EntryLocalServiceUtil.deleteEntry(entry);
            addGlobalSuccessInfoMessage();
        }
        catch (Exception e) {
            addGlobalUnexpectedErrorMessage();
            logger.error(e);
        }
   
        guestbookBacking.select(guestbookBacking.getSelectedGuestbook());
    }
   

   This method uses the deleteEntry(...) method you created in your service layer to delete an entry.

2. Add the following edit(Entry) method to your entry bean:

    public void edit(Entry entry) {
        guestbookBacking.setSelectedEntry(entry);
        guestbookBacking.editEntry();
    }
   

   The method sets the selected entry and calls the editEntry() method, which redirects the portlet to the entry view to edit the entry.

You’ve successfully edited your entry bean to support the Edit and Delete action buttons for Entry entity. As you read earlier, the Permissions button’s functionality will be configured in the entry wrapper class. You’ll do that next.

1. Open the com.liferay.docs.guestbook.wrappers.Entry class and add the following variable and property:

    private static final Logger logger = LoggerFactory.getLogger(Entry.class);
   
    private String permissionsUrl;
   

   The logger variable may look familiar to you. This was used in the managed beans to log error messages if an exception occurred. It’s used the same way here. The permissionsUrl property will be used in your new method, and called in the master view.

2. Add the getPermissionsUrl() method to the class:

    public String getPermissionsUrl() {
   
        if (permissionsUrl == null) {
   
            LiferayFacesContext liferayFacesContext = LiferayFacesContext.getInstance();
            ExternalContext externalContext = liferayFacesContext.getExternalContext();
            long scopeGroupId = liferayFacesContext.getScopeGroupId();
   
            // Get the underlying HttpServletRequest and HttpServletResponse
            PortletRequest portletRequest = (PortletRequest) externalContext.getRequest();
            HttpServletRequest httpServletRequest = PortalUtil.getHttpServletRequest(portletRequest);
            PortletResponse portletResponse = (PortletResponse) externalContext.getResponse();
            HttpServletResponse httpServletResponse = PortalUtil.getHttpServletResponse(portletResponse);
            ELContext elContext = liferayFacesContext.getELContext();
            StringJspWriter stringJspWriter = new StringJspWriter();
            PageContextAdapter pageContextAdapter = new PageContextAdapter(httpServletRequest, httpServletResponse,
                elContext, stringJspWriter);
   
            // Invoke the Liferay Tag class directly (rather than using the tag from a JSP).
            PermissionsURLTag permissionsURLTag = new PermissionsURLTag();
   
            permissionsURLTag.setPageContext(pageContextAdapter);
            permissionsURLTag.setModelResource(MODEL);
            permissionsURLTag.setModelResourceDescription(getName());
            permissionsURLTag.setRedirect("false");
            permissionsURLTag.setResourceGroupId(scopeGroupId);
            permissionsURLTag.setResourcePrimKey(String.valueOf(getEntryId()));
   
            // Set var to null if you want the tag to write out the url
            permissionsURLTag.setVar(null);
   
            try {
                permissionsURLTag.doStartTag();
                permissionsURLTag.doEndTag();
                permissionsUrl = stringJspWriter.toString();
            }
            catch (Exception e) {
                logger.error(e);
            }
   
        }
   
        return permissionsUrl;
    }
   

   This method generates the permissions URL used when clicking the entry entity’s Permissions button.

   

   Figure 1: The permissions URL generates the Permissions menu for the guestbook.

   In summary, this method grabs the underlying HttpServletRequest, HttpServletResponse, and ELContext to create a PageContextAdapter, invokes the Liferay PermissionsURLTag class directly and sets the PageContextAdapter and various other resources to it, and then writes the URL tag string to the permissionsUrl property.

All three of your action buttons’ action methods are complete. Next, you’ll edit the master view to display the buttons in the Guestbook portlet’s UI.