JBoss Portlet Bridge 2.0 Beta and GateIn

Just on the heels of the GateIn Beta2 release comes a double whammy from the JBoss Portlet Bridge project. We are releasing 2 new versions of both the 1.0 and 2.0 bridge. Now, just to clear up any confusion, the 2.0 bridge does not cover the JSF 2.0 spec. We are still in JSF 1.2 land in the portal environment. However, running 2.0 in a portlet is not far away and it should be coming to fruition just as JSF 2.0 technology starts to gain more ground in enterprise development.

First off, I want to thank the community for providing many patches and suggestions to improve the bridge.

I am also extremely happy to announce that the JBoss Portlet Bridge 2.0.0.BETA is now fully integrated with GateIn. All archetypes and examples run by default on GateIn. If you are still running on JBoss Portal, you must build the example apps or archetype based apps with the '-Pjbossportal' profile (i.e. mvn install -Pjbossportal).

New features with the new 2.0.0.BETA release are:

• Improved ajax processing (faster load times)
• PRP - Public render parameter processing in the bridge
• Seam exception handling in pages.xml
• better error handling for JSF and Richfaces portlets (this includes ViewExpiredException)
• Also fixed some bugs in archetypes to work fully with JBoss Tools (as seen in the video)


• PortalIdentity is now built in Seam component
  <security:portal-identity method="#{authenticator.authenticate}"></security:portal-identity>


• Script Renderer can be enabled by intit parameter in web.xml:
  

  <context-param>
      <param-name>org.jboss.portletbridge.WRAP_SCRIPTS</param-name>
      <param-value>true</param-value>
  </context-param>

This video shows how to deploy a Seam portlet using JBoss Tools to the all new GateIn portal. I also show need-to-know tips for migrating from the 1.0 bridge to 2.0.

JBoss Portlet Bridge Episode 4: Running 2.0 on GateIn from Wesley Hales on Vimeo.

JBoss Enterprise Portal Platform 4.3 CP02 is available now!

Hi everyone,

Just a note to let everyone know that JBoss EPP 4.3 CP02 is available now on the JBoss Customer Support Portal site. The new CP02 has a number of fixes to the UI components as well as some security enhancements.

Release notes are also available here:
https://jira.jboss.org/jira/secure/ReleaseNote.jspa?version=12313531&styleName=Html&projectId=12310745&Create=Create

P.S More news on what the JBoss Portal team up to these days including coming at JBoss World. Stay tuned.

Tweeting from JBoss Portal

While most of time we focus on improving enterprise aspects of JBoss Portal (read JBoss Enterprise Portal), sometimes we work on cool and fun stuff too. On that line, I have created Twitter portlet which has following features:

• Update your status
• Get messages that are sent directly to you (e.g. @prabhatjha in my case)
• Get list of folks who you are following and get their latest status. List is sortable.

Here are couple of screen shots:


You can grab the code from http://anonsvn.jboss.org/repos/qa/prabhat/twitter-portlet . It's built using twitter4j, Richfaces, JBoss Portlet Bridge. But remember, it's just for fun and it is not one of the supported portlet.

JBoss Portlet Bridge 2.0 Alpha Released!

I am extremely happy to announce the first Alpha implementation of the JSR-329 early public draft(2) specification. This is cutting edge code and will definitely change to match future revisions of the spec. If you are willing to live on the edge and help us chase down bugs and report them (hopefully with a patch), then please read on ;)

Although in a alpha release, this latest version is fully compatible with the portlet 2.0 environment and allows you to also run the latest versions of Seam and Richfaces in a portlet.

For starters, I put together a screen cast which shows how to produce a portlet event in a JSF(Seam) backing bean and how to consume it in another Seam portlet.

JBoss Portlet Bridge - Lesson 3: Seam and Portlet 2.0 Eventing from Wesley Hales

For a full description of what’s new in this version, mandatory configuration parameters, and instructions on using portlet 2.0 coordination features, see the Reference Guide.

Welcome eXo !

Live from Gartner Summit for portals and as published today, JBoss Portal project and eXo Portal project will merge into a unique one.

We have discussed this with existing users, existing partners, analysts and they all welcomed this news. Twitter went crazy too ;)

Each company will be able to focus on their expertise domain, eXo brings on a table years of UI development and JBoss brings it's middleware expertise to build a common platform and all under the LGPL license.

Mark Little, Sr. Director of Engineering, Middleware at Red Hat

The eXo portal has some impressive functionality in terms of ease of use, UI flexibility and straightforward management administration; JBoss.org's current portal project has a robust engine, performance and security features, combined this collaboration project will help drive portal capabilities forward

Benjamin Mestrallet, CEO eXo Platform

Open source software has delivered substantial returns on investment for organizations and we have the opportunity to deliver that same value within the portals space

The news went out today and has already been covered in several places:

• Julien Viet commented on the history (worth a read)
  
• http://exoplatform.com/portal/public/website/aboutUS/eXoJBossPartnership
• http://www.jboye.com/blogpost/exo-portal-and-jboss-portal-join-forces/
• http://blog.internetnews.com/skerner/2009/06/red-hat-jboss-gets-exo-portal.html
• http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS115834+10-Jun-2009+BW20090610
  

I hope you will be as thrilled as we are.
Also it's a great time to start contributing the project or think about joining us, remember we are still hiring.

Personal note
I am really happy to be working again with Julien.

JBoss Portal at the Gartner Summit

Here we are, waiting for the gates to open.
Stay tuned for the coming and exciting announcement ;) I will also twitter on #jbossportal.

New JBoss Portal and SSO framework integration guide

JBoss Portal supports integration with various well known SSO frameworks such as CAS, JOSSO and OpenSSO. Basic integration with CAS and JOSSO frameworks is described in Portal reference guide but if you are interested in more advanced configurations, you can look at our new SSO Frameworks Integration Guide.

This guide covers step by step instructions of JBoss Portal and SSO frameworks integration in various setups that are commonly found in software enterprises. Maybe you can find an answer for some of questions that have been plaguing you.

The guide covers these integration scenarios:

• Integration of JBoss Portal and SSO server on same host (HTTP protocol is used).
• Integration of JBoss Portal and SSO server on same host. Secure communication is used between JBoss Portal agent and SSO framework (HTTPS protocol is used).
• Integration of SSO server and more JBoss Portal instances deployed on multiple hosts
• Integration of JBoss Portal, SSO server and sample thirdparty web application.
• Integration of JBoss Portal and SSO server deployed on different hosts. SSO server is configured for authentication against portal database.
  

Since we are focussed on delivering a high quality portal server, we always try to integrate various scenarios in our automated test suite. We currently have automated most of the scenarios mentioned above using Selenium and Hudson and you can see the test results at http://hudson.jboss.org/hudson/view/JBoss%20Portal/job/jboss-portal-2.7-sso-selenium-tests/lastBuild/testReport/(root)/. Please let us know if your setup does not belong to one of these and we will try to include that as well.