Custom screen and custom control plugins

Custom plugins can be deployed just as for Web Determinations, by placing the .jar file into the WEB-INF\classes\plugins directory of the opa-interview-portlet web application. More detailed information about plugins can be found in the topic Customize the existing Web Determinations user experience.

The following are portlet-specific plugin considerations:

Custom screens

Custom screens for the portlet are developed using the same methodology as custom screens for Web Determinations, with the following restrictions:

If the screen needs to generate a URL to another screen or resource, you need to use the URL Rewriter to obtain a URL encoded for the portal server. Specifically, you need to use com.oracle.determinations.web.platform.controller.URLRewriter.getURL(). You can obtain an instance of the URL Rewriter using com.oracle.determinations.web.platform.controller.SessionContext.getCustomURL(). More information about the URL Rewriter can be found in the Javadoc (see the help\api directory of OPA Help).
If your custom screen needs to return an ExternalRedirectResponse, you cannot do so in the processAndRespond method, since this method is invoked during the portlet's render phase, when the portal framework does not allow external redirects. Instead, you can develop an event handler for the OnAfterProcessActionEvent, which updates the portlet response about to be rendered.

The portlet custom screen example (Example: Create a Custom Screen for the Interview Portlet) provides an example on how to implement redirects, including external redirects, in a custom screen for the portlet.

Custom controls

If your custom control needs to place a hyperlink on the page (for example, to link to another interview screen), the control Java code needs to use URL Rewriter to obtain a URL encoded for the portal server. Specifically, you need to use:

com.oracle.determinations.web.platform.controller.URLRewriter.getURL().

You can obtain an instance of the URL Rewriter using com.oracle.determinations.web.platform.controller.SessionContext.getCustomURL(). More information about the URL Rewriter can be found in the Javadoc (see the help\api directory of OPA Help).

As an example, the following Java code allows a custom control to build a URL for the summary screen (this is an additional method for the BenefitCodeControl class found in the topic Custom Control - BenefitCode Walkthrough Example:

/**
* An example of how to get a portlet URL for the summary screen, using the URL rewriter
*/
public String getCustomURL() {
        SessionContext ctx = screen.getSessionContext();
        URI summaryURI = new URI(
                "screen",
                ctx.getInterviewSession().getRulebase().getIdentifier(),
                ctx.getInterviewSession().getLocale(),
                ctx.getSecurityToken().getIdentifier(),
                ctx.getCaseID(), new String[]{EngineConstants.DEFAULT_SUMMARY_SCREEN_NAME}
        );
        return ctx.getURLRewriter().getURL(summaryURI, false);
}

The following needs to be inserted in the respective Velocity template for this custom control:

<a href="${control.getCustomURL()}">Click here to go to the summary screen</a>