Oracle WCI Multilanguage Portlets

One of the cool things with the Oracle WCI Portal (aka BEA ALUI, Plumtree) is that it ships with the source code of the UI, which gives you the opportunity to re-write the UI. Using this you can also modify some of the basic portal functionalities like for example how the portlets are loaded. You can find the class responsible for loading the portlet in the namespace com.plumtree.portalpages.browsing.myportal and the name of the class is MyPortalContentView.

Now let’s say you do have a use case where the user is able to switch the language inside the portal and you do want to load the portlets depending on the user current language. You can localize the names of the portlet by going to the portlet properties and names and then select Support Localized Names, like shown on the screen bellow:

For this example I create 3 community links portlets and localized them on different languages. Now I want to change the portal code to load only the portlets which have localized name in the current user language. To do so I have to override the MyPortalContentView. Here is the code for how to do it:

  1 import com.plumtree.openlog.OpenLogService;
  2 import com.plumtree.openlog.OpenLogger;
  3 import com.plumtree.portalpages.browsing.myportal.IMyPortalModelRO;
  4 import com.plumtree.portalpages.browsing.myportal.MyPortalContentView;
  5 import com.plumtree.portaluiinfrastructure.statichelpers.PTDebugHelpers;
  6 import com.plumtree.server.IPTGadget;
  7 import com.plumtree.server.IPTSession;
  8 import com.plumtree.uiinfrastructure.activityspace.AActivitySpace;
  9 import com.plumtree.uiinfrastructure.activityspace.IModel;
 10 import com.plumtree.uiinfrastructure.activityspace.IModelRO;
 11 import com.plumtree.xpshared.htmlelements.HTMLElementCollection;
 12 
 13 /**
 14  * Override the standard portal container view, show now only portlets localized to the current user language.
 15  * 
 16  * @author L.Pelov
 17  */
 18 public class MyAppPortalContentView extends MyPortalContentView {
 19 
 20     private static OpenLogger log = OpenLogService.GetLogger(OpenLogService
 21             .GetComponent(PTDebugHelpers.COMPONENT_PORTAL_BROWSING),
 22             "mydemo.portalpages.browsing.myportal.MyAppPortalContentView");
 23 
 24     /**
 25      * This function checks if portlet is localized to the current user language
 26      * 
 27      * @param portletIndex
 28      * @return true if the portlet is localized to current user language, otherwise false
 29      */
 30     protected boolean isPortletLocalized(int portletIndex) {
 31 
 32         int iPortletID = m_asModel.GetPortletIDFromIndex(portletIndex);
 33 
 34         // opens the portlet without to lock it!
 35         IPTGadget portlet = (IPTGadget) ((IPTSession) m_asOwner.GetUserSession()).GetGadgets().Open(
 36                 iPortletID, false);
 37 
 38         // get the current local language
 39         String currLocale = m_asOwner.GetLocale();
 40 
 41         if (currLocale.indexOf(portlet.GetPrimaryLang()) > -1) {
 42             // isLocalized = true;
 43             return true;
 44         }
 45         else {
 46             boolean isLocales = portlet.GetIsLocalized();
 47             if (isLocales) {
 48                 Object[][] arLocalNames = portlet.GetLocalizedNames();
 49 
 50                 // Get the available languages
 51                 if (arLocalNames != null && arLocalNames[0] != null && arLocalNames.length == 2) {
 52                     for (int cnt = 0; cnt < arLocalNames[0].length; cnt++) {
 53                         if (arLocalNames[0][cnt] != null) {
 54                             if (currLocale.indexOf(arLocalNames[0][cnt].toString()) > -1) {
 55                                 // isLocalized = true;
 56                                 // break;
 57                                 return true;
 58                             }
 59                         }
 60                     }
 61                 }
 62             }
 63         }
 64 
 65         return false;
 66     }
 67 
 68     /**
 69      * @param nColumnID
 70      *            The ID of the column this portlet is currently in.
 71      * @param nPortletIndex
 72      * 
 73      * @return a HTMLElementCollection containing the entire portlet including the portlet header and content.
 74      */
 75     public HTMLElementCollection DisplaySinglePortlet(int nColumnID, int portletIndex) {
 76 
 77         // if this portlet is not localized then just exit
 78         if (!this.isPortletLocalized(portletIndex)) {
 79             return new HTMLElementCollection();
 80         }
 81 
 82         return super.DisplaySinglePortlet(nColumnID, portletIndex);
 83 
 84     }
 85 
 86     /**
 87      * Displays portlet content like the DisplaySinglePortlet function, but it is most used by the PTTAGs
 88      * 
 89      * @param nColumnID
 90      *            The ID of the column this portlet is currently in.
 91      * @param nPortletIndex
 92      * 
 93      * @return a HTMLElementCollection containing the portlet body/content.
 94      */
 95     public HTMLElementCollection DisplaySinglePortletContent(int nColumnID, int portletIndex) {
 96         // L.Pelov - make sure for later if you use Adaptive Tags that they will work in the same way
 97         // if this portlet is not localized then just exit
 98         if (!this.isPortletLocalized(portletIndex)) {
 99             return new HTMLElementCollection();
100         }
101 
102         return super.DisplaySinglePortletContent(nColumnID, portletIndex);
103     }
104 
105     /** Parent Activity Space */
106     private AActivitySpace m_asOwner;
107 
108     /** Read Only Model for MyPortal */
109     private IMyPortalModelRO m_asModel;
110 
111     /**
112      * @see com.plumtree.uiinfrastructure.activityspace.IManagedObject#Create()
113      */
114     public Object Create() {
115         // L.Pelov - create from the subclass, not from the main one, to make sure that the original view will
116         // be replaced!
117         return new MyAppPortalContentView();
118     }
119 
120     /**
121      * @see com.plumtree.xpshared.activityspace.IView#GetName()
122      */
123     public String GetName() {
124         return STR_MVC_CLASS_NAME;
125     }
126 
127     /**
128      * @see com.plumtree.xpshared.activityspace.IView#Init(IModel, AActivitySpace)
129      */
130     public void Init(IModelRO model, AActivitySpace parent) {
131         log.Info("Init MyAppPortalContentView()");
132         
133         m_asModel = (IMyPortalModelRO) model;
134         m_asOwner = parent;
135 
136         // L.Pelov - IMPORTANT: you have to init also the main view otherwise you will get
137         // NullPointerException!
138         super.Init(model, parent);
139     }
140 
141 }
142 

Now several changes are made here. I add new function calls isPortletLocalized() which checks if portlet has been localized to current user language. If YES then the portlet show the portlet, if not then skip it.

Also as you can see from the code and I just override the function but after I check the if portlet should be load and call again the subclass method. This ensures that after you upgrade portal, even if it’s new functionality into the original method this code should work, except of course the Portal Server API has been change. It is of course best practices of course to test the code again when you upgrade to make sure that everything works well.

cheers