ALUI Enhancement: Get/Set All Preferences from Javascript

As you probably already know, ALUI Portal personalization features are mostly guarantied by the possibility of setting/getting "preferences" with various scopes. Not to myself extend too much on this concept, you can refer to the ALUI Development Documentation (Link HERE) to have further explanations. While you read this documentation, you'll learn that preferences can be set and retrieved through:

• the IDK API (most commonly),
• the server API (much less common since Server API should mostly be used only if the IDK cannot fulfill your needs), or
• the Javascript API (but only for preferences of scope "session")

What is usually done consists in building a JAVA or Dotnet application that uses the IDK API to get/set preferences within a portlet, allowing for the presentation or behavior of the portlet to change based on the preference chosen.

But as you build ALUI intranet or even Internet websites, you often realize that most of the portlets are either content-specific with some kind of personalization (i.e. a link showing only if this preference has been set for that user...), or have a pretty simple behavior and presentation.

Would not that be cool to be able to use "Publisher" for example to build those simple portlets? In most cases, with the power of the ALUI Portal Adaptive Tags coupled with the Publisher PCS Tags (this could apply to any other Web Content Management Systems, but why not use Publisher as an example since it is still alive :) ), you could build such simple portlets without the need for programming a portlet in JAVA or Dotnet...

But what about preferences? How could you set and get preferences, since they are available only through an API that can be used only using those programming languages? Well, ALUI has already thought it through, and integrated within their Javascript API the possibility to set/get "Session" preferences. That was great thinking indeed. But I kept (and still keep) asking myself: Why having developed this idea only half way through?? Why allowing to only set/get "Session" preferences through Javascript? All I know is that there is no reason why not...and I just wanted to share this essential feature.

Javascript Session preference: How does this work?

So first, let's understand how the Javascript preference access works. Basically an activity space has been developed and its code is found in the following package: com.plumtree.portalpages.browsing.sessionprefs. As the portal follows a strict MVC (Model View Controller) architecture, an activity space is mostly composed of a "Control" class (implementing IControl interface), a "Model" Class (implementing IModel interface) and a "Presentation" class (implenting IDisplayPage interface). You can refer to the "ALUI Portal Customization Package" to see the code of this sessionPrefs activity space. To request the activity space functionnality, simply create a HTTP request with the right parameters, like this:

http://your.host.domain.com/portal/server.pt?space=SessionPrefs&control=SessionPrefs&action=getprefs&_preferencename=

http://your.host.domain.com/portal/server.pt?space=SessionPrefs&control=SessionPrefs&action=setprefs&_preferencename=preferencervalue

From there, all there is to do is to allow that request to be called from Javascript, through an AJAX HTTPWebRequest...The javascript methods getSession() and SetSession() which initiate that AJAX HTTPWebRequest will use the PTPortalContext javascript object defined on every page to get the right ActivitySpace url as follows:

PTPortalContext.GET_SESSION_PREFS_URL = 'http://localhost/portal/server.pt?space=SessionPrefs&control=SessionPrefs&action=getprefs';
PTPortalContext.SET_SESSION_PREFS_URL = 'http://localhost/portal/server.pt?space=SessionPrefs&control=SessionPrefs&action=setprefs';

...and that's it...Plumtree/BEA delivered your ALUI Javascript-Enabled "Session" Preference behavior.

Javascript preference of "All Type": How does this work?

All I did was extending on this principle in order to make all type of preferences available through Javascript, and as you understood now, through the behind-the-scene Preference Activity Space. Since I post the code on "ALUI Toolbox Google Project", I will pass on the very details of the code...

The main outline is:

• Create a new Activity Space called "PortalPrefs" instead of SessionPrefs
• Update the PortalPrefControl class to take into account a new parameter "type" which allow user to specify the type of preference you want to get/set (possible values are: portlet, admin, session, user, community, communityportlet).
• Update the PortalPrefsModel class with the corresponding Preference Getter/Setter methods for each preference type (or scope)

Now, after installing this new code, the urls to access the AS are (differences in bold)

http://your.host.domain.com/portal/server.pt?space=PortalPrefs&control=PortalPrefs&action=getprefs&type=PreferenceType&_preferencename=

http://your.host.domain.com/portal/server.pt?space=PortalPrefs&control=PortalPrefs&action=setprefs&type=PreferenceType&_preferencename=preferencervalue

Then you have the choice as far as Javascript is concerned: either you create your own layer that performs the call to this new activity space, or you plug this new bahavior into the already existing Javascript framework, without any modification to the framework itself.

I personally chose the later, since I always try not to modify the portal existing libraries (just to allow for easier future upgrades of those libraries). All you have to do is to make sure to override on your portal page the PTPortalContext URL properties with the new AS URL end point BEFORE you call the already existing GetSession()/SetSession() javascript methods. To do that, you could simply create the following Facade JS methods to be called from your portlets:

<Script>

GetPortalPreference(prefType, prefname){

PTPortalContext.GET_SESSION_PREFS_URL = 'http://your.host.domain.com/portal/server.pt?space=PortalPrefs&control=PortalPrefs&action=getprefs&type=' + prefType;

GetSession(prefname); (this is the call to the already existing JS framework for session preference)

}

SetPortalPreference(prefType, prefname, prefvalue){

PTPortalContext.SET_SESSION_PREFS_URL = 'http://your.host.domain.com/portal/server.pt?space=PortalPrefs&control=PortalPrefs&action=setprefs&type=' + prefType;

SetSession(prefname); (this is the call to the already existing JS framework for session preference)

}

</script>

That's it! Feel free to browse the code (only JAVA version for now) at the Google Code Project I created (I also created for you the JAR that contains this code...that way, you can easily install and test this on your portal) and please let me know your thoughts! Hopefully, this will be integrated in the future releases of ALUI.