Using Dojo in a Shell

Question

I'd like to use some Dojo widgets (dijits) as part of my navigation elements for a modified portal shell that we've created (left column holding portlets).
Because the shell is validating against the xhtml-netuix-modified schema, I'm not able to add the dojoType attribute (used for declaring dijits) to the html tags in the shell.
I suppose I could try setting them programmatically, but I'd rather use the declarative form if possible.
Has anyone had success using Dojo's dijits in the Portal 10.2 shell?
Thanks for any help,
Dan Turkenkopf

Answer 1

Thanks for clarifying your use case. Sounds awesome!
It sounds like your left-hand navigation piece should be a netuix:header component. Header's can contain netuix:layouts, and netuix:layouts can contain placeholders and portlets. Also, even though it's called a "header", it doesn't have to be at the top of your document -- you can modify the body.jsp skeleton file to change where the header renders in relation to everything else on the page. Something like this:
<skeleon:context type="bodypc">
<skeleton:control name="body" presentationContext="${bodypc}">
<!-- set up HTML structure of page -->
<table>
<tr>
<td style="width: 30%;">
<skeleton:child presentationContext="${bodypc.headerPresentationContext}"/>
</td>
<td>
<skeleton:children/>
</td>
</skeleton:control>
</skeleton:context>
This says "render the header control in the first table cell, and the rest of the body's children controls in the second table cell". So something like this would help you handle WHERE the header is, in relation to everything else on the page.
Next step is to control what's in the header. For that, you'd modify the .shell file itself, and add a layout, placeholder, and portlets to it. You can use Workshop's Shell Editor to help there: http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E13155_01/wlp/docs103/portals/develop_ui_lookfeel.html#wp1060001. In your case, I think you'd want to use a one-column flow layout (so that your portlets flow vertically) and add your two portlets to it.
Last step is to add Dojo to the mix. I'd add the Dojo JS file(s) as a dependency to your portlets (http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E13155_01/wlp/docs103/portlets/building.html#wp1073505), so that Dojo is always available to the page when those portlets are present. Then, you can modify the header.jsp skeleton to add the Dojo hooks for the expand/collapse functionality. The accordion-ing of the portlets might be a little trickier, since all portlets use the same window.jsp skeleton file, but I'm sure something similar to the shell solution could be done there, too -- maybe with some selection logic in place to enable the functionality only on portlets with a particular definition label.
I hope that helps! Let us know how it goes!
George