Page Assembly for Page-Based Templates

When a user clicks a link on a page-based template, the portal servlet receives the user’s request, retrieves the content, properly formats it using a predefined portal template, and sends the assembled page back to the user’s browser. The portal servlet also ensures that the user has the proper security permissions and is allowed to view the page.

The following processing steps occur during the page-assembly process:

1. The browser sends a request for content to the portal web server.

   The browser sends an HTTP request for target content; the request includes the target URL. The portal web server invokes the portal servlet. If the request includes a URL from a PeopleTools release prior to 8.4, the portal servlet then identifies the target content based on the query string parameter that was inserted there when the referring page was proxied.

2. The portal servlet checks the portal registry to determine whether a content reference exists for the target URL.

   If a content reference exists for the target URL and the user does not have access to the content reference, the portal servlet responds with an error message. If the user does have access, the portal servlet continues its processing. If the content reference has been registered with a frame template, the portal servlet constructs the template and returns it as the response to the browser. The browser gets the content for each frame in the usual way. If the content reference has been registered as having no template, the servlet sends a redirect response to the browser for the original content. Otherwise, it goes on to the next step.

3. The portal servlet retrieves the appropriate template.

   If a registered content reference was found in the previous step, then the template associated with that content reference is used to wrap that content. If no template is associated, the portal servlet uses the template for the node associated with the content reference. If no node is associated with the content reference, then the default template for the portal is used. If no default portal template exists, the content appears without any template.

4. The portal servlet issues HTTP requests for content.

   The portal servlet issues an HTTP request for the requested content to the appropriate web server and receives an HTML document in return. It also issues an HTTP request for each pagelet used in the template.

5. The portal servlet merges content from previous versions of PeopleTools 8.4 from all HTML documents that it retrieved into the template HTML, and sends a single, complete HTML document back to the user’s browser.

   The template HTML may contain special PeopleSoft tags, including the Target tag and the Pagelet tag. Each Target tag is replaced with whatever content is retrieved when the request for target content is fulfilled. Each Pagelet tag is replaced with the proxied content specified by that tag.

   If a style sheet is associated with the template, it is used. If not, the style sheet associated with the target content is used. Style sheets included in template pagelets are used if they are present. Additionally, the portal servlet ensures that cookies and headers returned in the responses for the template pagelets are merged into the main response.