Overview of BEA ALUI LiquidSkin: Part 2

In my previous post "Overview of BEA ALUI Liquidskin", I talked about the great features that this offering provides. Now I want to talk about the installation of the component.

But first, I might not have been clear on my previous post: The LiquidSkin engine is running on the portal server, NOT on the image server. On the ALUI image server(s), you will find the different configuration files (all called LiquidSkin.xml in their own folder) that contains the settings for each skin in the various portal experience definitions. The xml files on the image server are of course not accessed every time a page is displayed, but loaded in the portal memory at specific intervals (very similar to Varpacks loading for those of you who are familiar with Varpacks).

LiquidSkin comes in 2 flavors: .NET or Java (like the portal). Depending on the portal you are running, you will chose the appropriate version.

For .NET, those are:

• LiquidSkin.dll (core LiquidSkin code that contains the base classes and the  various utility classes)
• LiquidSkinComponents.dll (contains the majority of Liquidskin components, i.e. LeftNavigation, Breadcrumb, Links, etc... Each of those components extends a base class defined in the core LiquidSkin.dll)
• LiquidSkinImpersonate.dll (optional component -for security purpose- that allows an administrator to impersonate any user in the portal. When activated, the administrator is logged in the portal as that user.)
• LiquidSkinFilteredCommunities.dll (optional component that creates a list of "My Community" links which are filtered to include and/or exclude certain 'types' of communities. A community 'type' is defined by a combination of property values associated with the community. Note: Expensive process. Enable Caching.)

For Java, you just replace dll with jar for the names.

Installation Steps:

It is said in the documentation that it should not take more than 30 minutes to install Liquidskin. This is TRUE!

• Stopping/Starting portal server(s)
• Copying a the jar/dll files to each portal server
• Editing the CustomActivitySpaces.xml and portalconfig.xml files on each portal server
• Copying the skin folders to each image server
• Importing a .pte file to create the custom properties used by LiquidSkin

Jar / Dll Installation

In order to install those jars / dlls in your portal, you just need to put them in the library folders of the portal installation, as well as in the portal web application itself.

Thus, you need to copy them in <pt_home>/ptportal/6.0/lib

And in the portal web application (method differs slightly between .NET and Java)

For .NET, it is easy since the portal application is not packaged in an archive, as it is for java. Thus, you just need to copy all the dlls in the <pt_home>/ptportal/6.0/webapp/portal/web/bin folder.

For Java, you will need to explode the portal.war and copy the LiquidSkin Jars in the newly exploded folder WEB-INF\lib\. Then, just repackage the portal.war and update the portal.ear.

Little Reminder for Jar operations:

• Exploding the war: jar -xvf portal.war
• Repacking the new war: jar -cvf portal.war * (to be done at the root of what you want to package)
• Update the ear: jar -uvf portal.ear portal.war

Portal Configuration

To enable the LiquidSkin pluggable navigation, you must edit the "<PORTAL_HOME>\settings\portal\CustomActivitySpaces.xml" file and add in it the LiquidSkin libraries:

<AppLibFiles>
<libfile name="LiquidSkin"/>
<libfile name="LiquidSkinComponents"/>
</AppLibFiles>

Portal Object Import

You must import the PTE package that contains 2 properties:

• "NavConfigFolder" property: This is attached (Global Object Property Map) to experience definition objects. You will save in that property the name of the liquidskin that corresponds to the experience definition you want "LiquidSkin enabled"
• "Subcommunity Display Order" is attached (Global Object Property Map) to the community objects. This is to allow custom sorting of communities within the Top or Left navigation components.

Optional: Modify margins and view width

As any other portal navigation. it is possible to change margins and view width in the PortalConfig.xml (section "portal:Navigation"). The only thing you need to know is that the the id of the LiquidSkin navigation framework is 71. This ID is to be appended to the navigation properties so that you can get for example a specific left navigation column width.

Finally, restart the web application server that host the portal. DONE!! In 18min 32 seconds!! See I did not lie :)