Kevin StClair

The parent project of the multiple module web application uses the uses the <packaging>pom</packaging> tag and several <module> tags to indicate that it is controlling the build order of several artifacts. The control is provided through the reactor plugin. The file structure that I use is: /ear /ear/pom.xml /web /web/pom.xml .classpath .project pom.xml The ear […]

Web Applications are WAR files that include java code and JSP files with a web.xml deployment descriptor that are intended to implement dynamic web functionality (as opposed to static web functionality which uses HTML files). A portal team typically uses this packaging technique for the following artifacts: Portal themes and skins web services iWidgets WebSphere […]

WebSphere Portal 6.0.1 introduced a capability called the URI resolution service or POC servlet  or the Resolver Framework depending on where you see it mentioned. The DeveloperWorks article called Accessing portal content with custom URLs is the most recent and informative post I have found describing this service. This service was created to allow non-portal sites in your […]

Releasing your portal project to a brand new environment can be a fairly large challenge. I maintain the reason for the challenge is that there are so many tools and procedures required for this process. It is difficult to find somebody on your team that has deep administrative experience coupled with a development background so […]

You use a parent pom.xml file that each portlet project inherits from to encapsulate your dependencies and maven plugin bindings. This keeps all this code out of sight from your portlet project. This first code posting shows the plugin definition under a pluginManagement section. This section is used to create any dependencies used by the […]

I recommend using a maven plugin to package your logic. The reason is that the ANT antcall and XSLT tasks require file inputs (and do not support URIs). When you package these file resources into a jar (as you do with a plugin) then you can extract them to the correct relative filesystem locations as […]

So far you have a compiled portlet and an XSLT capable of producing an xmlaccess request input file based on your specific portlet.xml file. Next you create an ANT script that is capable of submitting your request to the portal server. The script presented below diverges to distinguish between local portlet deployments (when you are […]

The deployment of a portlet to a portal server is accomplished using xmlaccess (also called the XML configuration interface). At this point I need to point out that the deploy goal of maven is a separate concept from a portlet deployment. The maven deploy goal is intended to move your packaged maven artifact to the maven […]

This post assumes that you have installed an automated build stack (which consists of maven, a maven compatible repository server, and a continuous integration (CI) server). This post also assumes that you have installed and configured the m2eclipse plugin for your RAD/Eclipse IDE. The details of these installations are beyond the scope of this series of posts. A maven […]

“Well it works on my machine” is the single most frustrating developer quote you will hear while working on a portal project. The open source world has experienced great success with automating builds and server deployments using apache maven and continuous integration (CI) servers like hudson, continuum, cruise control and others. Investing time in the beginning of […]