Providing Portlets via WSRP

From version 6.5.1 of CMS Fiona, our Portal Manager is able to provide remote portlets from a WSRP producer. This can be done by means of a virtual context path that is specified in the Portal Manager. Such a virtual context path refers by means of an URL to a WSDL file (WSDL = Web Service Description Language) which describes how the service can be accessed.

Since remote portlets are made available in this way, they behave like portlets of the Portal Manager and can be addressed using normal npspm-Syntax.

To make WSRP portlets available, please extend the ProxyPortletContainer bean located in the webapps/PM/WEB-INF/pm.xml configuration file of the CMS instance concerned. Please add the wsrpPathMapping property and a value subelement to the bean configuration. As the value of the value element specify for each WSRP producer a line containing the virtual context path and the WSDL URL to be used. Example:

/WS-ORA = http://portalstandards.oracle.com/portletapp/portlets?WSDL

If the URL points to a WSDL file which contains references to external sources not available for some reason (firewall access restrictions, for example), please download the WSDL file and make the reference point to its path in the local file system using file:///. Example:

/WS-IBM = file:///var/temp/portalserver-ibm.wsdl

The following is a sample excerpt from the pm.xml file:

<bean id="portletContainer" class="com.infopark.pm.portlet.ProxyPortletContainer">
  <property name="preferencesStorage">
    <bean class="com.infopark.pm.FilesystemPreferencesStorage" />
  </property>
  <property name="cacheManager" ref="cacheManager" />
  <property name="wsrpPathMapping">
    <value>
      /WS-ORA = https://portalstandards.oracle.com/portletapp/portlets?WSDL
      /WS-IBM = file:///var/temp/portalserver-ibm.wsdl
    </value>
  </property>
  <property name="webserviceRefreshInterval" value="0" />
</bean>

Changes to the configuration must be completed by restarting the Application Server. If the Portal Manager and the Producer are able to communicate with each other, the handles of the portlets can then be retrieved using the following URL:

http://my.server:8080/PM/debug/

Once a portlet has been identified, it can be embedded into the content analogously to the following example, whereby portletHandle refers to the handle of the portlet to be included:

<npspm includeportlet="/WS-ORA/portletHandle" />

Other Properties

  • webserviceRefreshInterval: The interval for updating the list of the remote portlets (in seconds).

Making WSDL files Available

The WSDL file describing the WSRP service normally contains references to schemes or name spaces located on internet servers, for example http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/wsrp/specifications/version1/wsrp_v1_bindings.wsdl, http://www.w3.org/XML/1998/namespace). If your network configuration prevents the Portal Manager from connecting via HTTP/HTTPS to servers outside the intranet or the DMZ, the targets of the references need to be made available differently because the consumer requires the complete description of the remote services. For this, the following methods can be used:

Using a Proxy Server

If your network policy permits the Portal Manager to connect to the internet and to the producer via a proxy server, you might want to start the Application Server running the Portal Manager with the proxyHost and proxyPort Java options.

If you use the Trifork Server, these options can be added to the rc.npsd.conf configuration file located in the bin directory of the CMS instance concerned. Example:

  set conf(triforkArgs) [list server start -devel -vmargs=-server\
    -vmargs=-Xmx256m -vmargs=-Xms256m\
    -vmargs=-XX:MaxPermSize=128m -DproxyHost=mein.server \
    -DproxyPort=3128]

Please note that this permits all applications to connect to the internet via the proxy server.

Making Included Files Locally Available at the Producer

Configure your producer in such a way that it only includes XML files available locally, or adapt the WSDL file accordingly. The references in the WSDL file can then be resolved by means of requests to the producer.

Making Included files Locally Available at the Consumer

If changes cannot be made to the producer, the WSDL file and all the XML files it includes can be made available locally. This is the least flexible method because changes to the producer always need to be reconstructed locally.

To do this, please use a browser to get the WSDL file via its URL and save it to your local file system. Then edit this file and replace all imports from external web servers with references to local files, meaning that you need to download all the external references. Repeat this for all downloaded files until all external references are available locally and are included instead of their remote counterparts. Place all the files into a single directory of the application server and configure this producer's wsrpPathMapping in the pm.xml as a local WSDL file.

Related links