Portlet Instance Identifier.

Question

Hi All,
It is my understanding that the when we put portlet into a desktop(as a part of
creating desktop either from ".portal" template OR by way of assembling), specific
portlet instance will be uniquely identified by its instance ID.
If we have to attach some properties for this portlet,which would help in achieving
some business functionality, we can use instance ID as identifier in our applicaton
specific table to store/retrieve the values.
Can somebody validate this??
TIA,
Prashanth Bhat.

Answer 1

Thanks for the reply. I have gone through the article on portlet preferences by
Subbu. But some of the things are clear and some are not.
1. As per Subbu, we cannot depend upon Instance IDs. That means we cannot have
this as PK to store data.
my comment : If this is the case, then what is the unique identifier of portlet
instance??.
2. Subbu says that to store any application specific data these are to be followed
     Setup:
o     Add a preference to your portlet. This preference will act as the primary key
to your portlet’s application data. Assign a default value for this preference.
o     Create tables in your database to store application data with the value of the
preference as the primary key.
·     In your portlet:
o     When you want to associate application data with the current portlet instance,
check the value of the preference. If the value is the default, generate a new
value (for example, using a sequence number generator), and set this as the value
of the preference, and store the preference.
my comment: If the portlet instance ID gets changed, then how can we retrieve
this PK (for application data) at later point of time. And also, only a specific
user who has stored a value can only retrieve. But if i want application data
not for each user but for whole portlet itself, then how can i use this??
o     If the value of the preference is not the default, no need to generate a new
value.
o     Now store your application data using the value of the preference as the primary
key.
my comment : If this is possibility, then if portlet is designed to serve many
users and configured by a admin,
in such cases, how can we tie the portlet instance with application specific data??
As the storing is very much tied to a user, if application data is not for
a user rather for all the users and the admin user configures/stores what
to be displayed for a user. In such cases, WLP user has left with no choice
to store any application speific data as we cannot depend on portlet
instance.
Hope,somebody answers this.
Thanks,
Prashanth Bhat.
"Prashanth " <[email protected]> wrote:
>
Thanks Dennis - I got it on how to duplicate the portlet.
"Dennis" <[email protected]> wrote:
I have a base sp2 instatllation too. The duplicate functionality is
not on the
portlet page itself, but on the 'All portlets' page where it lists all
the portlets
in the library. On the right there is a duplicate button for each portlet.
Wrt. your question about preferences, given your use case, I don't believe
the
API currently supports it and only supports the scenario where the preference
is tied to the user, rather than the portlet.
"Prashanth " <[email protected]> wrote:
Thanks for the reply. I am using Portal 8.1 SP2. There is no possibility
of duplicating
the portlet definition through portal admin tool (from library) .
I am wondering whether this is available in SP3 ?? OR should I apply
some patch
to get this functionality??
Pls direct me on this.
Thanks,
Prashanth Bhat.
"Dennis" <[email protected]> wrote:
If each documentum portlet should be different from others, and allbased
on the
same template, you may look at creating new definitions in the admin
t
ool. In
the portal tab, click on library, and then 'All Portlets', on thispage,
you will
be able to duplicate portlets. This will make a duplicate definition
rather than
a duplicate instance. You can then use the definition id to persist
data against.
I think preferences could also work for you, since there appears tobe
several
levels of scope you can set the preference at in portal. For example,
you can
set them in the admin tool and make them read only, thus all instances
and children
of those instances will inherit the preferences of the definition.
Dennis
"Prashanth " <[email protected]> wrote:
Thanks for the reply and clarification. I would explain our scenario:
We have a portlet which is interacting with Documentum. This has
been
designed
as a very general and configurable portlet. This portlet has to bring
all the
documents from Documentum from a specific folder. The folder namehas
to be a
configurable property and will be set by so called Content Administrator.
Depending on the folder for which a portlet is mapped to,the end
user
gets documents
accordingly.
I have used portlet preference for this, but it will not work properly.
The reason
for this is that, content admin will set the values for this preference
where
as this has to be used by all the users.
As portlet preferences values are stored as user specific(the onewho
saves can
see his value and not by anybody else), I cannot use this feature.
Based on the above scenario, can you pls suggest me what is the best
way to do
this??
Thanks in advance,
Prashanth Bhat.
"Dennis" <[email protected]> wrote:
It's a bit more complicated than that. The scenario you state is
true
for non-personalized
desktops. As soon as you start personalizing it, the framework
creates
a 'child'
portlet with a new instance id that has the original portlet instance
id as its
parent. Thus, if you use the instance id, and you do not checkto
see
if the
portlet id is a child or parent id, you could become unstuck.
Added to this, a document about portlet preferences by Subbu on
dev2dev
stated
that the portal framework could change the the portlet instanceid
at
any time.
Unfortunately the article did not go on to list an exhaustive listof
situations
in which this occurs. The only assumption we can make is thus thatthe
portal
framework will take care of dependencies on the instance id that
it
knows
about,
which in your case won't help because it does not know about your
new
instance
id -> properties relationships.
You might consider using the definition id to match properties against,
or you
might use portlet preferences.
Cheers
Dennis
"Prashanth " <[email protected]> wrote:
Hi All,
It is my understanding that the when we put portlet into a desktop(as
a part of
creating desktop either from ".portal" template OR by way of assembling),
specific
portlet instance will be uniquely identified by its instance ID.
If we have to attach some properties for this portlet,which wouldhelp
in achieving
some business functionality, we can use instance ID as identifierin
our applicaton
specific table to store/retrieve the values.
Can somebody validate this??
TIA,
Prashanth Bhat.