Building Portals with the Java Portlet API (Expert's Voice) (v. 2) [Paperback]

Jeff Linwood (Author), David Minter (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1590592840 | ISBN-13: 978-1590592847 | Publication Date: August 23, 2004

Building non-proprietary solutions on top of portals is easy with the new portlet API specification and the open source Jetspeed portal server. In this book, Linwood and Minter describe the new portlet API, including security, lifecycles, configuration, and personalization. Several example portlets are developed to give the readers hands-on portlet experience.

Linwood and Minter also discuss integrating the open source search engine Lucene with the Jetspeed portal engine, content syndication and RSS, Web services for Remote Portals (WSRP), and single sign on.

Because most readers will be integrating their existing systems into a portal, the book covers porting an already written application into the portal environment.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Jeff Linwood has been programming software since he had a 286 in high school. He got caught up with the Internet when he got access to a Unix shell account and it has been downhill ever since. Jeff has published articles on several Jakarta Apache open source projects in Dr. Dobb's Journal and JavaWorld.

David Minter has over five years of Java developing experience. He is a conclutant for Accenture, and has recently completed a major three-tier system after complete involvement in the project life cycle. His Java knowledge is based on strong C++ experience. David has worked with a variety of Unix-like Operating Systems - AIX, Solaris and Linux. He has an excellent understanding of practical database design and has worked with DB/2 and Oracle. He is most experienced with SQL Server (including good Transact-SQL).

Product Details

• Paperback: 393 pages
• Publisher: Apress (August 23, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1590592840
• ISBN-13: 978-1590592847
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.9 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #505,366 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Solid intro to portals, December 13, 2004

By 

Thomas Paul (Plainview, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Building Portals with the Java Portlet API (Expert's Voice) (v. 2) (Paperback)

Portals are becoming more popular as companies are looking for a single web-based entry point into their various applications. Java provides a standard portal model with JSR 168. This book is a thorough introduction into JSR 168 that will help get portal developers up to speed into this relatively new specification.

The book starts with an excellent introduction into developing portlets. The first seven chapters cover all the details of developing portlets. Response and request objects are covered in detail. The portlet life cycle is clearly explained. Deployment descriptors are discussed. Integrating with Servlets and JSPs is described. The remainder of the book covers more advanced topics. Anyone working with a portal knows the problems with providing single sign-on to multiple applications. The authors discuss this issue giving several examples. The authors cover syndication, searching, personalization, web services, content management, and more.

My only complaint with the book is that it uses the Apache Pluto portal, which is not in final release yet. Pluto is an open source portal but it is complicated to distribute content to it (you are forced to use Maven). When the book explains how to distribute portlets to Pluto it gets a little confusing because the authors need to explain multiple configuration files, some of which are exclusive to Pluto. Other than this one problem, the book gives a solid introduction to developing a portal providing detailed information of both the basics and many advanced concepts. Clearly the authors understand portal development and know how to pass that information on to their readers.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good foundation for learning about portlets, June 16, 2005

By 

J. Armstrong (MD, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Building Portals with the Java Portlet API (Expert's Voice) (v. 2) (Paperback)

My primary motivation for reading this book, was to gain an understanding of JSR 168 and the Portlet API before digging in and learning WebSphere Portal administration and development (I like to understand the standards and how to code things by hand before letting a tool do the heavy lifting for me).

The book provides a good foundation for the basics of building portlets. This book delivered. I would recommend this book, if you are new to portlets, but not new to building web applications. Having a solid understanding of servlets and JSP's will benefit you greatly.

This book will not give you the expertise to build a production ready portal, but it will give you enough information that will allow you to begin learning the advanced techniques or to distinguish vendor specific enhancements to the official spec.

Chapters 1 through 7 and 10 were solid, informative, very easy to read, and fairly well edited (there are typos throughout the book, but I've come to expect this from Apress). At chapter 8 the book started to become less useful. Chapter 8 had a lot of words, but not a lot of substance (I already know how Kerberos works, I wanted to know how to integrate this into a portal environment). Chapters 9 and 13 required significant tweaking to get everything to work.

Overall, the authors tone and style was useful, very few attempts at humor (I can't stand tutorials and reference manuals that attempt to be cute). Diagrams and illustrations were used effectively and added value.

The book could have expanded on the material in later chapters, especially Chapters 9 (RSS and Syndication), 10 (Lucene Search Engine), and 15 (Content Management Systems). Also, do not use this book as a reference for good coding style (e.g., swallowing exceptions, inefficient string usage, scoping of variables, etc.).

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Natural progression from JSP/Servlets, September 15, 2004

By 

W Boudville (Terra, Sol 3) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Building Portals with the Java Portlet API (Expert's Voice) (v. 2) (Paperback)

Many companies have recognised the need for portals to provide an easy way for users to get at corporate information, in a way controlled by the company. Inevitably, there has been a writing of APIs to regularise what a portal is. Here, our authors give this, in the context of J2EE and the latest Java.

The book explains how to use the Java Portal API. It shows a portal as a container of portlets. Each portlet is a wrapper around some single coherent function. At least, that is the ideal!

You will be greatly eased in understanding what is offered if you have already written Java Servlets and JSPs. The Portal API and its recommended usage were deliberately written to mimic those, as much as possible. There is really nothing difficult here.

Plus, put simply, if you can understand Servlets and JSPs, it strongly behooves you to upgrade your skill set and learn about portals. You have to keep moving forward. If only because there are programmers in India (and elsewhere) actively commoditising your current skill set. Just a few steps behind you. So perhaps try this book and keep going.