Creating a Portal Application and Portal Web Project

To create the necessary resources for portal development, you must do one of two things:

Option 1: Create a new portal application and add a Portal Web Project to it

or
Option 2: Install Portal into an existing application and add a Portal Web Project to it

Following are the procedures for each option.

Option 1: To create new portal application and add a Portal Web project to it

Use this procedure to create a new portal application.

You do not need to perform these steps if you are developing on a shared domain and the portal application has already been created and stored in a version-control system. Simply synchronize to the current version of the domain to put the portal application on your machine.

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's e-docs Web site.

Performing this step ensures you have a server (config.xml) for your portal application to use, as described later in this procedure.
Create a new portal application. In WebLogic Workshop Platform Edition, choose File -->New -->Application.
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 <app_name> 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. See the instructions in Portal Samples for more information.
You now have the resources and directories for developing personalized applications and creating portals to surface applications.
Start your development server. In WebLogic Workshop, choose Tools-->WebLogic Server-->Start WebLogic Server. The server you assigned to your application in the previous steps starts. All your work is deployed automatically on your machine as you develop.

Option 2: To install portal in an existing application and add a Portal Web project to it

Use this procedure to add portal services to an existing application.

You do not need to perform these steps if you are developing on a shared domain and the portal-enabled application has already been created and stored in a version-control system. Simply synchronize to the current version of the domain to put the portal application on your machine.

In WebLogic Workshop Platform Edition, open the application in which you want to install portal.
In the Application window, right-click the <app_name> directory and choose Install-->Portal. WebLogic Workshop adds 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 <app_name> 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 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. See the instructions in Portal Samples for more information.
You now have the resources and directories for developing personalized applications and creating portals to surface applications.
Start your development server if it is not already running. In WebLogic Workshop, choose Tools-->WebLogic Server-->Start WebLogic Server. All your work is deployed automatically on your machine as you develop.