The term cooperative portlets refers to the capability of portlets on a page to interact with each other by sharing information. One or more cooperative portlets on a portal page can automatically react to changes from a source portlet triggered by an action or event in the source portlet. Portlets that are targets of the event can react so that users are not required to make repetitive changes or actions in other portlets on the page. This provides a coordinated and consistent behavior between the portlets on the page and enhances users' overall experience.
Cooperative portlets subscribe to a model for declaring, publishing, and sharing information with each other using the WebSphere® Portal property broker. Portlets subscribe to the broker by publishing typed data items, or properties, that they can share, either as a provider or as a recipient.
Cooperative portlets can be source portlets, target portlets, or both.
A user launches a Click-to-Action event from an icon on the source portlet. Please note that while cooperative portlets can be implemented in various ways, Click-to-Action is a specific technique supported by the Rational® Developer tool interface. The icon presents a pop-up menu containing the list of targets for the action. After the user selects a specific target, the property broker delivers the data to the target in the form of the corresponding portlet action.
Using the Click-to-Action delivery method, users can transfer data with a simple click from a source portlet to one or more target portlets, causing the target to react to the action and display a new view with the results. The user can also broadcast the property to all portlets on the page that have declared an action associated with a matching input property.
Click-to-Action support is available for basic, Faces, and Struts portlets as follows:
Portlet Type | WebSphere Portal 5.0.2.2 and 5.1 | |
---|---|---|
JSR 168 API | IBM® portlet API | |
Basic portlet | Not supported. Note: The
generic WebSphere Portal
cooperative portlet capability, based on WebSphere property broker, is supported
in v5.1.
|
Supported |
Faces portlet | Supported | |
Struts portlet | Supported |
Click-to-Action portlets do not work with the pager function for either the WebSphere Portal or the WebSphere Portal Test Environment when included in a Faces JSP page that includes the <c2a:encodeProperty> tag along with the <hx:pagerDelux> tag or the <hx:pagerWeb> tag. To use Click-to-Action and the pager function of the data table together in a Faces JSP page, use the <hx:pagerSimple> tag or the <hx:pagerGoto> tag instead of the <hx:pagerDelux> tag or the <hx:pagerWeb> tag.
Icon | Description | Appears in |
---|---|---|
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Cooperative Source Portlet | Project Explorer view and the Portlet Deployment Descriptor editor |
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Cooperative Target Portlet | Project Explorer view and the Portlet Deployment Descriptor editor |
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Cooperative Source and Target Portlet | Project Explorer view and the Portlet Deployment Descriptor editor |
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Click-to-Action Output Property (encodeProperty) | JSP Pages in Page Designer and the Palette view |
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Click-to-Action Output Properties (encodeProperties) | JSP Pages in Page Designer and the Palette view |
Wiring is a technique for connecting cooperative portlets so that changes in the source portlet automatically update the target portlets without any user interaction. A wire is used to automatically transfer properties to target portlets without prompting the Click-to-Action menu.
The basic wiring capabilities provided by the portal tooling support both IBM API and JSR 168 portlets for WebSphere Portal v5.1. These capabilities are equivalent to those provided by the Portlet Wiring Tool in WebSphere Portal 5.1.