Getting Started with Portal Development

This document provides an introduction to building portals with BEA WebLogic Workshop Platform Edition. It includes information on the following subjects:

Before You Begin

These instructions presuppose a successful installation of BEA WebLogic Workshop Platform 8.1.

Development Tools for WebLogic Portal 8.1

The development functionality exposed in previous releases has been replaced with WebLogic Workshop. Creating portals and portlets, previewing the application, and packaging the end result for deployment onto a server or cluster are all done inside WebLogic Workshop.

Starting the Development Environment

From the Windows Start menu, select Programs > BEA WebLogic Platform 8.1 > WebLogic Workshop 8.1

This starts the development environment, but does not start the server.

Creating a New Portal

If you have not yet created a portal domain on your development machine, create one with the Configuration Wizard. For instructions, see the Overview of Platform Configuration on the BEA documentation Web site.

Create a new portal application. In WebLogic Workshop Platform Edition, choose File>New>Application.

Performing this step ensures you have a server (config.xml) for your portal application to use.

In the New Application window, select Portal Application in the right pane.

In the Directory field, click Browse to set the location of the new application. The application will be created in a subdirectory of the directory you select.

Make sure the Name field contains the name of the application. This name will be the application directory.

In the Server field, click Browse and select the config.xml file for the server (domain) you want to use.

The config.xml file is in the portal domain directory you created.

Click Create. The application directory appears in the Application window. The application contains the WebLogic Administration Portal (contained in Modules/adminPortal.war), a datasync directory (data) for interaction management development, and application-level EJBs and APIs.

Create a portal Web project for your application. Right-click the application directory in the Application window and choose New>Project.

In the New Project window, select Portal Web Project in the right pane.

In the Project name field, enter the name for the portal Web project. This will be the name of a Web application directory.

Click Create. The project folder appears in the Application window. The portal Web project contains WebLogic Portal JSP tags, Web-application-level APIs, and default portal framework files.

If you have any external projects or files you want to include in your portal application, perform any of the following steps:

To import a project, right-click the <app-name> directory in the Application window and choose Import Project. In the Import Project window, select the type of project to import, browse to select the project folder, and click Import.
To import files, such as existing datasync files (User Segments, Campaigns, Placeholders, and so on) or the Workshop Portal Extensions sample portlets to use in your portals, right-click the appropriate directory in the Application window and choose Import. In the Import Files window, select the directory or files you want to import, and click Import.

The sample portlets are located in <BEA_HOME>\<WEBLOGIC_HOME>\samples\portal\portalApp\sampleportal\portlets. There are other useful sample files throughout the <BEA_HOME>\<WEBLOGIC_HOME>\samples directory.
You now have the resources and directories for developing interaction management functionality and creating portals to surface applications.

To create a portal, right-click the portal Web project folder and choose New > Portal. Enter a filename for the portal (keep the .portal extension) and click Create.

Previewing a Portal

WebLogic Workshop allows you to preview the current project as you work.

In the WebLogic Workshop menu, choose Portal>Open Current Portal.

If the server has not been started, you will be asked to start the server. Choose Yes.

Once the server is started, you can preview the current portal by navigating to the .portal file.

Where to Go Next

See the following documents for background information, as well as instructions for managing portals: