Building Portlets

Portlets are the basic building blocks of portal Web applications, and enable the presentation behavior of a subset of an application to be managed as a single unit. A portlet exists as a set of associated files, mostly XML and JPSs. In the WebLogic Workshop IDE, portlets can be edited visually in Design View, and the JSPs can be edited in Design View and Source View.

You can think of portlets as the windows that surface your applications, information, and business processes. Portlets can communicate with each other, they can work with Java controls, and take part in Java Page Flows that determine a user's path through an application. You can have multiple portlets on a page. You can also have multiple instances of a single portlet.

Architecturally, a portlet is a collection of objects described by an XML file with the .portlet extension. The framework uses the elements described in that file to render the Portlet at runtime, applying any permissions and customization at specific points in the assembly of the HTML that is eventually generated. The Portlet itself can use a JSP, a Page Flow, or an optional backing file, and can be built to conform to the JSR 168 standard for portlet compatibility. Portlets can consume existing Web applications and content (ASP, JSP, HTML, XML, and so on).

The following topics guide you through the portlet creation process:

Using Portlets from the Portlet Library

To save time and get a head start on your development work, you can use the sample portlets in the Portlet Library.

Creating Portlets

If the portlets in the Portlet Library do not match your current needs, you can develop new portlets in a variety of ways, including through the use of the Portlet Wizard.

Customizing Portlets

After creating your portlets, you can customize them to suit the requirements of your portal application.