Rendering external links inside a java portlet

Question

Hi,
I have a Java portlet written which displays a page including some links that are pointing to an external page. When clicking on that link the portal environment is left, that's not what I want. I want to render the content of this link inside the portlet.
Is there any way to do that in a Java portlet? Like a method that rewrites all URLs inside a HTML page so that when clicked they will be rendered again in the portlet and again all the URLs inside this page are rewritten?
Thanks for any help.
Erik

Answer 1

Hi Erik,
You can use methods in PortletRendererUtil to construct links to your resources so that you are within the Portal context.
Another workaround to this would be to have a controller jsp for the show mode. Put this as the resource in the <showPage>....</showPage> tag in the provider.xml
Now this JSP will forward the request to the appropriate JSP (or any other resource) based on an action.
So in all the jsps, let the form be submitted to the controller jsp, which reads the action from request & forwards it to the right jsp. e.g. in your scenario,
the main JSP (that contains links etc) will contain a form element which will have the following signature.
String portletActionLink = HttpPortletRendererUtil.htmlFormActionLink(request, HttpPortletRendererUtil.PAGE_LINK);
<form name="formName" method="POST" action="<%= portletActionLink %>" >
<%= HttpPortletRendererUtil.htmlFormHiddenFields(request, HttpPortletRendererUtil.PAGE_LINK) %>
<input type="hidden" name="ClickedAction" value="">
</form>
When any link inside the form is clicked, the "ClickedAction" hidden element will be set to the right action inside a javascript & the form will be submitted to the controller jsp (as we are still in the "Show mode")
The controller jsp will contain the following extract,
String action = prr.getParameter("ClickedAction");
if ( action.equals("externalPage1") )
//have a runtime include for ExternalPage1 jsp
You can thus extend the controller based on number of actions you have.
In this approach, all requests are routed through the show mode controller jsp. However, through other methods in the PortletRendererUtil class, you can rewrite a direct URL to that JSP.
Regards,
Abhinav