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content aggregation without portal environment

 
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Hi,

I'm using jsf 1.2, richFaches 3.3.3.FINAL, facelets 1.1.15 and jboss 5.1 app-server.

I don't want to use a portal, but we want develop multiple wars, ears finally webapps.
What are other content-aggregation-solutions for combinig webapps with one layout.



Dealing with frames is not state of the art. But what chance do I have to reload
only the content with other *.xhtml files from other wars?

Thanks
Gamba
 
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Anything within a single web browser "window" must all come from the same base webapp. I'm using the term "window" to mean any of the following: a stand-alone window, a frame/IFRAME, or a tab. But a web page within a "window" may contain multiple sub-URLs such as javascript files, CSS, images, and so forth. And each and every one of them can potentially reference a different webapp.

A portal application will often divide the portal page into portlet areas, and one way to manage them is to make each portlet area be an HTML "div" element whose primary child is the results of a URL request.

Facelets can be used to tile a web page, but the tiles themselves will generally be div or table elements. Actually making them properly display results from multiple apps requires that the apps are written to render themselves in the limited space of the portal pane.

The easiest way to do that is to use a portal framework such as Apache Pluto. JSF does work quite well in a portlet environment.

Basically, if you want a portal-style system, you're a lot better off using a real portal sysem than trying to re-invent portals without being portals. Facelets xhtml files aren't designed to be referenced in a cross-application way, since they're compiled by their owning webapp to product an HTML page. Frames have problems of their own.
 
Nwanku Kanu
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Hi Tim,

thank you for the response. We ware still using a portal, but are looking forward
to use other technologies. We are using only a few portal features and think it
could be better and easier to use other frameworks.

Currently I'm using facelets and try to ui:include my sub-urls ... without being successful
at the moment. My own ResourceResolver seems to work, but an weird exception occurs
when invoking my other application.

Maybe someone has other hints to realize this project, becaus big insurance-apps for example
use other technics and before the "portal" hype getting active I believe there were other
technologies for realizing a multi-app (war/ear) application.

Thanks in advance
Nwanku
 
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Hi Nwanku,

Maybe I am wrong, I don't think you can include or reload other *.xhtml files from other wars.
But if you happen to use Maven to build your applications, the Maven overlays plugin is probably an option.
Basically, the whole idea is you extract the common web resources (such as template files, images) shared by
applications into a common artifact, and then allow maven to use this plugin to build this common resources into your wars.
As result, all wars built in this way will have the same style and layout.

Not sure if this can solve your problem. The plugin can be declared in POM.xml as follows:




By the way, here is the link you can find more information:
http://maven.apache.org/plugins/maven-war-plugin/overlays.html
 
Nwanku Kanu
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Hi LR,

thank you for the great hint. This solution let me separate my webapps and
centralize my "portal-like-layout".

I think that could be one possible solution. But I'm still interested in other opinions
and how other deal with this issue.

Nwanku
 
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