Provider Object

The provider is a programmatic entity responsible for fetching and displaying content in a channel. The XML tag for defining a provider object is <Provider name=“providerName” class=“providerClass”>.

A provider object is a pointer to the display profile provider definition. The provider is a contract between ProviderContext and channel instance (provider object).

The display profile stores provider definitions that are available to the channel and containers to implement their content generation behavior. The display profile provider definition contains the information necessary for a client of the display profile to construct the provider object, namely, the Java class name. The class that implements the provider’s behavior is defined in the provider attribute. Channels use the name attribute values to refer to the provider.

The provider definition sets default property values for all channels that point to this provider. Channel-specific properties are only necessary when the provider defaults are not appropriate. The provider display profile object should contain default values for all properties that are used in the provider Java object. For example, if the provider Java code contains:

getStringProperty("color")

the provider display profile object should have a default value for color.

Example 15–3 Example Provider Object XML Syntax

<Provider name="XMLProvider" class="com.sun.portal.providers.xml.XMLProvider">
    <Properties>
        <String name="title" value="*** XML Provider ***"/>
        <String name="description" value="*** DESCRIPTION ***"/>
        <String name="width" value="thick"/>
        <String name=”color” value=”blue”/>
        <String name="refreshTime" value="0" advanced="true"/>
        <Boolean name="isEditable" value="false" advanced="true"/>
        <String name="helpURL" value="desktop/xmlchann.htm" advanced="true"/>
        <String name="fontFace1" value="Sans-serif"/>
        <String name="productName" value="Sun Java System Portal Server"/>
        <String name="url" value="file:///var/opt/SUNWportal/portals/<portal_id>/
			desktop/default/xml/getQuotes.xml"/>
        <String name="xslFileName" value="html_stockquote.xsl"/>
        <Integer name="timeout" value="100"/>
        <String name="inputEncoding" value="iso-8859-1"/>
        <String name="urlScraperRulesetID" value="default_ruleset"/>
        <Boolean name="cookiesToForwardAll" value="true"/>
        <Collection name="cookiesToForwardList">
        </Collection>
    </Properties>
</Provider>