Invoking Local Services

Once Service Builder has generated your portlet project’s services, you can call them from anywhere in your application. For example, you can invoke services from your application’s *Portlet classes or from your application’s view layer (JSPs, Freemarker templates, or Velocity templates). Remember that when invoking a service, you should always call one of the static service methods of a *Util class. You should never call the service methods of an *Impl class directly.

In the Event Listing project, for example, the Event Listing portlet needs to perform create, read, update, and delete (CRUD) operations on Events. The Location Listing portlet needs to perform CRUD operations on Locations. To facilitate these operations, the following methods were added to the EventListingPortlet class:

• addEvent
• updateEvent
• deleteEvent

These portlet methods invoke the location service methods responsible for adding, updating, and deleting Event entities. Similar portlet methods were added to the LocationListingPortlet class.

Here’s a version of the EventListingPortlet class containing these portlet methods and their service invocations. Note that this version of the EventListingPortlet differs from the final version since this portlet invokes local services and the final version of the portlet invokes remote services.

package com.liferay.docs.eventlisting.portlet;

import java.util.Calendar;

import javax.portlet.ActionRequest;
import javax.portlet.ActionResponse;

import com.liferay.docs.eventlisting.model.Event;
import com.liferay.docs.eventlisting.service.EventLocalServiceUtil;
import com.liferay.portal.kernel.exception.PortalException;
import com.liferay.portal.kernel.exception.SystemException;
import com.liferay.portal.kernel.log.Log;
import com.liferay.portal.kernel.log.LogFactoryUtil;
import com.liferay.portal.kernel.util.ParamUtil;
import com.liferay.portal.service.ServiceContext;
import com.liferay.portal.service.ServiceContextFactory;
import com.liferay.util.bridges.mvc.MVCPortlet;

public class EventListingPortlet extends MVCPortlet {

    public void addEvent(ActionRequest request, ActionResponse response)
            throws Exception {

        _updateEvent(request);

        sendRedirect(request, response);
    }

    public void deleteEvent(ActionRequest request, ActionResponse response)
        throws Exception {

        long eventId = ParamUtil.getLong(request, "eventId");

        EventLocalServiceUtil.deleteEvent(eventId);

        sendRedirect(request, response);
    }

    public void updateEvent(ActionRequest request, ActionResponse response)
        throws Exception {

        _updateEvent(request);

        sendRedirect(request, response);
    }

    private Event _updateEvent(ActionRequest request)
        throws PortalException, SystemException {

        long eventId = ParamUtil.getLong(request, "eventId");
        String name = ParamUtil.getString(request, "name");
        String description = ParamUtil.getString(request, "description");
        long locationId = ParamUtil.getLong(request, "locationId");

        int year = ParamUtil.getInteger(request, "dateYear");
        int month = ParamUtil.getInteger(request, "dateMonth");
        int day = ParamUtil.getInteger(request, "dateDay");
        int hour = ParamUtil.getInteger(request, "dateHour");
        int minute = ParamUtil.getInteger(request, "dateMinute");
        int amPm = ParamUtil.getInteger(request, "dateAmPm");

        if (amPm == Calendar.PM) {
            hour += 12;
        }

        ServiceContext serviceContext = ServiceContextFactory.getInstance(
            Event.class.getName(), request);

        Event event = null;

        if (eventId <= 0) {
            event = EventLocalServiceUtil.addEvent(
                serviceContext.getUserId(), serviceContext.getScopeGroupId(),
                name, description, month, day, year, hour, minute, locationId,
                serviceContext);
        }
        else {
            event = EventLocalServiceUtil.getEvent(eventId);

            event = EventLocalServiceUtil.updateEvent(
                serviceContext.getUserId(), eventId, name, description, month,
                day, year, hour, minute, locationId, serviceContext);
        }
        
        return event;
    }

    private static Log _log = LogFactoryUtil.getLog(EventListingPortlet.class);
}

The Event Listing Portlet’s addEvent, updateEvent, and deleteEvent methods call the appropriate methods from EventLocalServiceUtil. Liferay’s ParamUtil getter methods such as getLong and getString return default values like 0 or "" if the specified request parameter is not available from the portlet request. When adding a new event, for example, no event ID is available so ParamUtil.getLong("request", "eventId") returns 0. The Event portlet’s addEvent method calls EventLocalServiceUtil’s addEvent method. The event ID for the new event is generated at the service layer in the addEvent method that you added to the EventLocalServiceImpl class. The EventLocalServiceUtil generated for us by Service Builder contains various CRUD methods:

• createEvent
• addEvent
• deleteEvent
• updateEvent
• fetchEvent
• getEvent

The methods listed in the figure below are all generated by Service Builder and can be called by EventListingPortlet.

Figure 1: The `EventListingPortlet` class can access these methods of `EventLocalServiceUtil`, many of which are CRUD operations.

Portlet classes should have access only to the *LocalServiceUtil (and *ServiceUtil, in the case of remote services) classes. The *LocalServiceUtil classes, in turn, call their injected *LocalServiceImpl classes. Notice in the figure above that the EventLocalServiceUtil utility class has a private instance variable called _service. The _service instance variable of type EventLocalService gets an instance of EventLocalServiceImpl at runtime via dependency injection. So all the methods of the EventLocalServiceUtil utility class internally call corresponding methods of the EventLocalServiceImpl class at runtime.

The LocationListingPortlet class contains methods that are very similar to the ones in the EventListingPortlet class:

package com.liferay.docs.eventlisting.portlet;

import javax.portlet.ActionRequest;
import javax.portlet.ActionResponse;

import com.liferay.docs.eventlisting.model.Location;
import com.liferay.docs.eventlisting.service.LocationLocalServiceUtil;
import com.liferay.portal.kernel.exception.PortalException;
import com.liferay.portal.kernel.exception.SystemException;
import com.liferay.portal.kernel.log.Log;
import com.liferay.portal.kernel.log.LogFactoryUtil;
import com.liferay.portal.kernel.util.ParamUtil;
import com.liferay.portal.service.ServiceContext;
import com.liferay.portal.service.ServiceContextFactory;
import com.liferay.util.bridges.mvc.MVCPortlet;

public class LocationListingPortlet extends MVCPortlet {

    public void addLocation(ActionRequest request, ActionResponse response)
            throws Exception {

        _updateLocation(request);

        sendRedirect(request, response);
    }

    public void deleteLocation(ActionRequest request, ActionResponse response)
        throws Exception {

        long locationId = ParamUtil.getLong(request, "locationId");

        LocationLocalServiceUtil.deleteLocation(locationId);

        sendRedirect(request, response);
    }

    public void updateLocation(ActionRequest request, ActionResponse response)
        throws Exception {

        _updateLocation(request);

        sendRedirect(request, response);
    }

    private Location _updateLocation(ActionRequest request)
            throws PortalException, SystemException {

        long locationId = (ParamUtil.getLong(request, "locationId"));
        String name = (ParamUtil.getString(request, "name"));
        String description = (ParamUtil.getString(request, "description"));
        String streetAddress = (ParamUtil.getString(request, "streetAddress"));
        String city = (ParamUtil.getString(request, "city"));
        String stateOrProvince = (ParamUtil.getString(request, "stateOrProvince"));
        String country = (ParamUtil.getString(request, "country"));

        ServiceContext serviceContext = ServiceContextFactory.getInstance(
                Location.class.getName(), request);

        Location location = null;

        if (locationId <= 0) {

            location = LocationLocalServiceUtil.addLocation(
                serviceContext.getUserId(), serviceContext.getScopeGroupId(), name, description,
                streetAddress, city, stateOrProvince, country, serviceContext);
        }
        else {
            location = LocationLocalServiceUtil.getLocation(locationId);

            location = LocationLocalServiceUtil.updateLocation(
                    serviceContext.getUserId(), locationId, name,
                    description, streetAddress, city, stateOrProvince, country,
                    serviceContext);
        }

        return location;
    }

    private static Log _log = LogFactoryUtil.getLog(LocationListingPortlet.class);

}

These examples demonstrate how you can call the local services generated by Service Builder in your project’s *Portlet classes. To learn how to call Liferay services, please see the Service Security Layers and Finding and Invoking Liferay Services tutorials.

Related Topics

Creating Local Services

Creating Remote Services

Invoking Remote Services

Invoking Liferay Services in your Android App

Invoking Liferay Services in your iOS App