Exploiting the WebSphere Application Server V6.1 Portlet Container: Part 2: Going Beyond the Basics

To manage portlets, a portal framework needs to know which portlets are available in the system. WebSphere Application Server V6.1 provides new Managed Beans (MBeans) for portlets and portlet applications. A developer can use these MBeans to access information from the deployment descriptor of any deployed portlet. Portlet URL Addressablity supports HTML out-of-the-box. If a developer wants to support other markups, the developer can use PortletDocumentFilters which enable him or her to easily add different markup support. Like servlet filters, they are called prior to a portlet to change its behavior or default output. This paper shows how to use the aggregation tag library to build a developer's own portal framework, how to use the MBean API, and how to customize portlets to support additional markups.