I need to share multiple classes and properties file between portlets.
So I made a portlet Common-portlet, and in the rest of the portlets I made it as required development context in liferay-plugin-package.properties.
In eclipse, I also added the Common-portlet into the rest of the portlet's classpath.
After doing this eclipse shows no error.
But when I run the rest of the portlets it shows:
java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: com/xxx/xxxxxxx/xxxxx/util/JSONUtil.
Is the approach above correct?
If yes then what I am lacking.
If no then what can be a better approach?
I would suggest create one separate java project and put all the common java file inside it and
extract the same as .jar file put it into tomcat-7.0.40\lib\ext and give a classpath refenerece from this directory or else in eclipse you can add this common project's reference all other portlet.
Related
Domino Designer is based on Eclipse so I can change most of project's properties, like the build path and so on.
The Java team gives us a JAR to implement in our XPages and our managed beans but it's a pain to not have the javadoc and sources associated to help us in our code.
I tried to associate Javadoc and sources in "Project properties > Java Build Path > Librairies" to the JAR but it's lost when I save and re-open (the JAR is store in Code/Jars).
Is there another way to use a JAR and those resources ?
Including the source code in the jars will work. That's what we do for OpenNTF Domino API.
Maybe by digging into the files in Package Explorer it would be possible to work out where it's set and automate setting it (possibly from xsp.properties or notes.ini or somewhere else) via a custom builder. Swiper on OpenNTF is an example of a DDE plugin that adds a custom builder.
I'm developing a Liferay application, consisting on 2 different portlets, an both have to make certain operations in common, so I decided to put that operations in static methods in an external Utils class.
I have to externalize that class to avoid duplicating the same code in both portlets, and I want to have the portlets in different WAR files.
I know I can package the Utils class in a JAR file, but we are still developing and we don't want to regenerate the JAR and restart the Tomcat for every change.
Which is the best option and how can I perform it?
If you're using the Liferay SDK, you can use the clients (recently changed to shared) directory to put your common code.
A good example is how deploy-listener-shared is used in conjunction with deploy-listener-hook.
From what it looks like, all the configuration you need to do is to modify your build.xml files that will use the client\shared classes. If you look at build file of deploy-listener-hook you can see all you need to add is the.
For the new SDK:
<property name="import.shared" value="my-utils-shared" />
For the older SDK:
<property name="dependent.clients" value="my-utils-client" />
Hope this helps!
There is another method that involves building a JAR file but it doesn't require a server restart (on Tomcat at least).
Write a build script for your JAR file so it compiles, builds the JAR and finally copies it to the following location:
{tomcat}/webapps/ROOT/WEB-INF/lib
Then in your portlet open the "liferay-plugin-package.properties" (in Liferay Developer Studio / Liferay IDE this should open with a nice GUI).
Then add the name of your JAR to the "portal-dependency-jars" list in this file so in the source it would like (Or just hit the "Add" button in the GUI and select the JARs you want):
portal-dependency-jars=my-custom-lib.jar,my-other-custom-lib.jar
Save the file, and redeploy the portlet, and the JAR will be copied across when the portlet is deployed.
I've used this method for custom JARs, and 3rd party JARs that I've needed to use in my portlets.
For the development phase just package the jar file with both applications.
Unless one application depends on the other somehow it is completely ok.
Another solution is to use JRebel tool. It will allow you to redeploy jar in tomcat without restarting.
Also you may have several portlets in one .war. You may just define them both in portlet.xml.
I have a portlet project that needs to do some Group querying. I've not created the project but it was made with the Eclipse Liferay SDK plugin.
I've added a DynamicQueryFactoryUtil.forClass(Group.class) but it fails in runtime. It complains about not finding GroupImpl.class, which is implementation for interface Group. My project dependencies doesn't include portlet-impl (it contains GroupImpl.class).
I'm not sure if I should:
include that jar into dependencies for compiling
include that jar into portlet jar
Or I'm doing something wrong and querying groups would be available right out of the box.
PS: I'm pretty newbie in Liferay things...
PS2: It's Liferay 6.1
To enable Liferay to retrieve the right class, you need to provide a correct classloader to the initialization of your DynamicQuery, in this case the portal's classloader because that one has access to the model implementations:
DynamicQueryFactoryUtil.forClass(Group.class, PortalClassLoaderUtil.getClassLoader())
I'd like to ask you for best practices with developing with Liferay SDK.
I have the SDK downloaded, I have Eclipse ready, it works, I can create new portlets and run local Liferay instance to test it.
Here is my situation - all the source code I have is in the Eclipse workspace, currently it is only portlets what I'm working on.
Liferay SDK I have in completely different location than workspace. Let's say ~/dev/liferay_sdk.
Eclipse workspace is located in ~/workspace.
At the beggining, it was not working like that. Eclipse from some reason can't find or use Liferay SDK. When I changed "Project validation" in Eclipse/Liferay configuration to "Ignore" the "Liferay Plugin SDK is not valid", it started to work without problems.
Next problem happend when it comes to need to build a WAR for example.
In the portlet directory in the workspace is present "build.xml" file. But inside it refers to another xml file, which should be located one directory up, and this one refers to more thing in relatively location and so on.
In short, it assumes that you have the portlets etc, inside the Liferay SDK.
Like "~/dev/liferay_sdk/portlets".
My question is, Am I wrong completely, or could you suggest me the best practices with this?
I don't want to mix SDK and the code, it sounds wrong to me.
Thanks for help!
I think, the best practice is still when your portlet projects are located inside the Liferay Plugins SDK directory. That way you can take all the advantages of the Liferay IDE plugin for Eclipse, for example. Because as far as I understand Liferay IDE will not allowed you to have portlet projects in another location. It's pretty easy to import projects to Eclipse from inside the Liferay SDK directory, and that's not problem.
But I also faced the same sort of problem when tried to save portlet project to the Git repository. Possible solutions with symbolic links didn't work correctly on every system. Thus I slightly modified the build.xml file to be able to run ant tasks from any directory. For portlets it was something like that:
<project name="your-portlet" basedir="." default="deploy">
<property file="build.properties" />
<property name="project.dir" value="${liferay.sdk.home}" />
<import file="${project.dir}/build-common-plugin.xml" />
</project>
Notice that you should define property "liferay.sdk.home" in build.properties and it should be path to the Liferay Plugins SDK.
As for other types of Liferay plugins (themes, hooks, etc.) you should import another build file for building that type of plugin. For example, for themes it will be:
<import file="${project.dir}/themes/build-common-theme.xml" />
Hope you'll get the idea. :) But think twice before doing something like that.
Liferay plugins are developed inside the Liferay Plugins SDK, its called SDK for a very good reason.
I don't find anything wrong with the plugins-SDK and the code tied togather, below are few reasons why:
If you see the liferay repository of plugins on github, you would find all the sample portlets and other plugins are stored in their respective folders inside plugins-SDK.
So if you want to develop liferay plugins (with or without IDE), the best practice (the only efficient way I think) is to have the projects created inside the respective folders of plugins SDK like portlet projects inside portlets folder, hook project inside hooks folder etc.
If you have used Liferay IDE when you create a plugin project (Liferay project) in this IDE you specify the SDK and the server runtime and what it does is it creates the project inside your Plugins SDK and copies the .settings, .classpath & .project file inside the project created. It does not create the project inside your workspace as eclipse normally does for other projects.
Hope I have managed explain it clearly and this was what you wanted.
I'm already quite happy with the other answers, this could have been distributed through comments at those, but a separate answer gives some more structuring options:
As Prakash says, it's not really bad to do that. In addition to his answer, you do not need to have your code in the workspace directory. Eclipse is happy to put it anywhere in the filesystem - thus while you work with Eclipse you don't even care where exactly your code is (and as you check it into version control - right? - you actually never need to care.
If you want to use Liferay's OOTB ant scripts: They are geared towards exactly the setup you describe: Work in the SDK directory. It's actually not bad, but if you don't like it, you just have to accept that you can't work with build.xml without changing it (like Artem suggests).
Another option is to use maven - this also bypasses the sdk (and the Liferay IDE integration), so you're again free to put your sourcecode whereever you like and let maven do the rest.
I can imagine some rather esoteric and rare issues with Artem's suggestion (like referring to custom parent themes when you imply some relative position) but I consider that as extremely minor, so if that works for you: Go ahead. Just keep in mind that you don't fulfill the basic assumptions that the SDK makes, so you might have to change things that violate the assumptions. I can't imagine this being too hard if you keep this in mind.
Of course, what you miss with that solution is the neat handling of including build.${username}.properties - you'll have to have your own build.properties that define ${liferay.sdk.home}. If you're not working in a team, that's ok. Otherwise you'll have to invent this yourself (and code it) or rely on global parameters to be configured with every team member.
I need to share a library (built in-house) between portlets and I prefer to put it in a common place instead of adding it as dependency to every portlet that need it because I want to update the library once. Can I build a hook or ext plugin that the portlets can refer to and access the library? I know that you can add it to the common library directory and add it to liferay-plugin-package.properties for each portlet but the location depends on the application server. I want to know, there is a standard or cleaner way to do this? Thanks in advance.
With the tomcat bundle, the common usage is to put these in the tomcat/lib/ext folder.
There is one big drawback, every modification in this folder will require a server restart.