WebWork MVC Portlet Framework

Overview

WWPortlet is a MVC Framework for JSR168 Portlet based on WebWork,Velocity, Spring, Hibernate. Using WWPortlet can minimize the difficulty of Portlet Development. During the Portlet development early stage, you even can use normal Web Container such as Tomcat, WAS as testing environment to develop portal application, and last deploy in the JetSpeed/Tomcat or WebSphere Portal Server v5.1.

Using WWPortlet to develop Portal Application, you do not need to know any API & concept of Portlet & JSR168, you can develop your Portal Application just as traditional WebWork/Velocity application.

Why you need this MVC Portlet Framework?

Recently more & more developers are interesting in Portal Development, but JSR168 API is difficult to learn to develop big reality application. Also JSR168 API is different from traditional Servlet API, every client post request is seperated to two steps to run: processAction, (doView|doHelp|doEdit). Such development model is nightmare for newbie.

Now more open source fans are familiar in WebWork, Spring, Hibernate, Velocity etc. framework, and used those framework in their production successfully.

Can we continue to use those skills in developing Portal application?

Can we develop Portal application just as traditional J2EE application?

The answer is yes, we do that. This is the right place to answer your those questions. You can use WWPortlet MVC Framework to develop portlet just like legacy WebWork/Velocity application, you can test your application in Tomcat/WebSphere, even in JSE, which WebWork provide such advantage. Then last deploy tested application in JetSpeed/WebSphere Portal Server as standard JSR168 Portlet Application.

Feature

Support WebWork 2.1.7 as MVC

Only Support Velocity 1.3 as WebWork view in WWPortlet Version 1.0

Support SiteMesh 2.2 as Site Decoration tools

Use Spring-XWork-Integration to support Spring at business layer. Support Spring1.1/1.2 Version.

Provide OpenSessionInXWorkInterceptor to support Hibernate Session automatic management. Support Hibernate 2.1/3.0.

Use cewolf taglib to support JFreeChart 1.0 display in Portal.

To Do List

Add more documents about how to develop real & production WWPortlet application.

Add JSP Support,

already supported, please check CVS.

Add SiteMesh JSP Support,

already supported, please check CVS.

Add more smoothly support for developed application run in both Web-Container & Portlte-Container without change any application codes. Change the code <a href="$actionURL?wwLink=/index.vm">Home</a> to <a href="$!actionURLwwLink./index.vm">Home</a>.

Added Link TagLib to support such function, please check CVS. If you use this Link Taglib in your application, you DO NOT need change any of your codes to make them running smoothly in JSR168 Portal or Normal web container.

Link Taglib demo in velocity VM
#bodytag (Link "href='hello.jsp'") WebWork JSP Demo 7 #end

Link Taglib demo in JSP
<ww:link href="'hello.jsp'">WebWork JSP Demo 7</ww:link>