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.
Related
So, I can see many files under customize folder under platform.
Is there any other way to oveerride platform in general other than putting it in customize folder?
If we have to override some OOTB file there are two ways:
1) If its in some extension, we can create customized extension and do our changes.
2) Add stuff into customize folder and do ant customize.
What if OOTB file is in platform? Is there any other way?
I expect to customize platform without adding it to customize folder.
Is the function/bean you want to override is injected through Spring?
If no, and you need to override say some jar, class or xml. You have choice of ant customize or buildcallbacks.xml
If yes, it's no different than overriding any other beans from parent extension. The only thing is that you will not need to create an extension dependency as platform is available globally.
For example : If you wish to override some function in DefaultCatalogDao to give your own implementation. You can do it like...
Create your own implementation extending the platform related service
Inject your custom bean with alias of the defaultCatalogDao
<alias alias="catalogDao" name="customCatalogDao"/>
<bean id="customCatalogDao" class="......CustomCatalogDao" parent="defaultCatalogDao"/>
For Commerce Cloud
You can change platform files using customize folder in Commerce Cloud V2 too. You would need to create a folder in your custom repository with name _CUSTOMIZE_ and then as you do in non cloud version, add your files (with exact folder structure as in platform).
Once you creare above folder, CCV2 build strategy automatically picks and deploys it, without any additional configuration.
Hope it helps!
Using buildcallbacks you can replace the files even the files in platform jar .
You can simply copy paste your file or write your own shell script to execute it and copy file to platform but how would it be different from ant customize. And why would you want to go away from standard hybris practices? Would that give you any extra benefit? I am sure that would only lead to issues during upgrade etc. Its not spring bean injection where you could tell your platform to use your implementation instead on other. There is no sense in wasting time in finding something which doesnt go along with product best practices.
I deployed a portlet in liferay 7 and it got deployed successfully and was available for use. I want to replace the jsp file, in earlier version I could see my application in tomcat/webapps folder and replace it quickly.
Now I am unable to locate the exploded war in liferay 7. I can only see the war in osgi/war folder.
Can someone help me with that.
Thanks in advance.
While I mostly agree with what Olaf wrote, I do understand the need to be able to make changes in JSP files and try them quickly during development. I'm afraid I don't have the solution for that yet.
However, let me answer the question you asked:
where is war exploded in Liferay 7 tomcat after getting copied in osgi folder
It is NOT (at least not the way it was done by application servers)! When you deploy a WAR file in Liferay 7, it will automatically (on the fly) convert it into OSGi bundle and install it in OSGi runtime. This way now Liferay is fully in charge of deploying plugins and does not need to rely on various application servers.
PLEASE NOTE: Every bundle has it's own state folder. In Liferay those are in <LIFERAY_HOME>/osgi/state. If you know the bundle ID you can easily find it. It may be (I haven't checked) that you'll find some JSP files there. The reason I'm writing this is to warn you (in case you figured it yourself) to NEVER modify bundle's state folder manually. Doing so may brake the whole environment. In worse case scenario you may have to redeploy everything in clean environment.
You should not rely on behavior like this. In previous versions it was the task of the application server to compile changed JSPs at runtime. However, this is bad practice in production systems and totally screws up your maintainability. If you need to update some UI code frequently, I'm suggesting you change your implementation to utilize ADT (Application Display Templates), e.g. through Freemarker or Velocity. Those are meant to be updated at runtime, where the JSP updates were a side effect of Tomcat's default (development friendly, production hostile) configuration
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.
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.