This document discusses using Ajax in enterprise portals. It introduces the presenter and defines key concepts like portals, portlets, and bridges. It then covers challenges with portlet 1.0 Ajax and how portlet 2.0 improvements like resource URLs help. Popular Ajax libraries like IceFaces and RichFaces are demonstrated running on portlets. The document concludes with a discussion of mashups and questions.

1. Ajax in Enterprise Portals
Wesley Hales
http://wesleyhales.com

2. Introductions
• Your experience with portals?
• Have you used new Portlet 2.0
technologies?
• What do you want to gain from this
session?

3. Who is Wesley Hales
• JBoss Portal Lead UI Architect
• Author of InfoQ article series:
Developing Portlets using JSF, Ajax, and Seam
• JBoss Portlet Bridge project lead
• JSR-301 Expert Group member
• http://wesleyhales.com

4. Portals & Portlets
What is a Portal?
• Windows that provide access to web
applications and other information.
• Works across organizational boundaries to
aggregate content coming from various web
technologies: JSF, Seam, Struts, Wicket, PHP...

5. Portals & Portlets
Portlets
• Are managed by a portal.
• Displayed via a Portal Page
which is an aggregator
of the portlet windows.
• A Portlet Application is also a Web Application. The
Portlet Application may contain servlets and JSPs in
addition to portlets. Portlets, servlets and JSPs may
share information through their session.

6. Portlet Ajax vs. Regular
(Servlet) Ajax
Pitfalls with 1.0 portlet
• Action and render URLs point to the portal, not to the portlet
• you cannot make asynchronous calls to portlets through portlet URLs
• This results in the replaced markup being all the portal page markup
not just the portlet window
How we handle it
• Because a portlet is a Web application that can contain other
resources, such as servlets and JSP pages, you can make the
asynchronous requests to the resources that are bundled with the
portlet.

7. Standard Portlet 1.0 Ajax

8. Ajax gets better with Portlet 2.0
serveResource and Resource Urls
• With the newer (JSR-286) spec, we now have the
serveResource() mechanism that makes Ajax easier.
• Makes it easy to migrate existing JSR 168
applications
• Works with existing client-side libraries
• Partial updates to the portlet’s UI

9. Portlet 2.0 Ajax

10. Portlet 2.0 Ajax Demo

11. Today's Ajax Component Libraries
• What libraries are available to portlet developers?
• Do I have to use JSF?
• It is only framework (currently) with a spec backing it
for portlets.
• Two of the more popular libraries for JSF are:
• IceFaces
• Uses custom built bridge
• RichFaces
• Works with a JSR-301 based bridge

12. What is a Bridge, and why do we
need it?
• There are different bridges to handle many different web
applications.
• Wicket
• Seam
• Spring MVC
• JSF
• Struts
• PHP
• A bridge is often just a portlet.
• Recently the JSR-301 specification was formed to handle JSF
in portlets which is much more than a simple portlet ;-)

13. Portlet
Other component libraries, like IceFaces, provide their own quot;bridgequot; or way to
handle the portlet and JSF lifecycles.

14. IceFaces Portlet Demo

15. IceFaces Portlet Markup

16. RichFaces Portlet
The RichFaces component library runs under the JBoss Portlet Bridge, an
implementation of the JSR-301 specification to support JSF within a portlet.

17. RichFaces Portlet Demo

18. RichFaces Portlet Markup

19. Portlet Bridge Summary
• Standards make life easier when investing in a
portlet/Ajax/Component solution
• Currently the JBoss Portlet Bridge supports any
combination of JSF, Seam, and RichFaces to run
inside a portlet.
• It is currently in Beta 4 and should be approaching
GA sometime in early '09 wen the spec is finalized.
• JSR 301 scheduled to be complete early ’09 (168)

20. Mashups and OpenSocial Portlets
• Who is doing it?
• Are there any portlets available that make
this easy?

21. QuickStart Portlet Demo

22. Questions?
• IceFaces Portlet Setup Info
http://tinyurl.com/3l2fuz
• JBoss Portlet Bridge
http://www.jboss.org/portletbridge/