Portlet Preference Persistence

Question

Hi folks,
We have observed some behaviour which seems kind of strange and was
hoping someone at BEA or anybody else for that matter could provide us
with some insight into what we are missing.
When defining portlet preferences in the admin tool, if we define the
preference on a portlet in the library, the preference gets persisted
into the pf_portlet_preference table and the portlet_definition_id is
inserted into the portlet_instance_id column. However, when we add a
portlet to a portal and add a preference there, the portlet_instance_id
gets inserted into the portlet_instance_id column.
We haven't been able to determine how to differentiate between those ids
that were definition_ids and those ids that were instance_ids. Of
course, if there is no mechanism to differentiate between them then this
is a bug. Can anyone help?
If it helps, we have set propogate-portlet-preferences to false in
netuix-config.xml.
Cheers
Dennis

Answer 1

I ran a simple test. I put the following line of code in a JSP and pointed a portlet at it:
PortletContextFactory.createPortletContext.setSettingValue(SettingType.Portlet, "foo", "bar");
I put this portlet in three places:
1) A MyPage
2) A Community (id 234)
3) Another Community (id 235)
When I looked in the database in the PTPREFS table, I was really surprised by what I saw. It created three rows as follows:
PREFNAME PREFVALUE PREFOBJECTID PREFCLASSID
foo      bar       0            0
foo      bar       234          512
foo      bar       235          512Prior to G6, if my memory serves me correctly, a portlet pref could be set on one community and read on another. I'm not as certain about this point, but I think it could also be set on a MyPage and read on a community (and vice versa).
If you wanted page-specific or community-specific portlet preferences, you could always append the page id or community id to the pref name. However, following this undocumented design change, there's no way AFAIK to remove the new community-specific nature of portlet prefs.
Bug or feature? Hard to say. I'd like to get the official word from BEA on whether this was intentional or not and either way, could somebody please update the documentation ? If there's been a major change in the design of the pref model, there ought to be at least a little documentation on it.
Chris Bucchere | bdg | [email protected] | http://www.thebdgway.com
Edited by bucchere at 02/12/2007 8:47 PM