Client-Side tagging support
A click-to-action event is one of the ways in which portlets can interact with each other and share information. When the user clicks a source element, the portal displays a context menu listing targets that match the selected source. When the user selects a menu item, the portal invokes the corresponding target passing it the source data.
Earlier, the click-to-action technique was only available to portlets that adhered to the IBM Portlet API. However, WebSphere® Portal V6.1 now supports client-side tagging that enables click-to-action capability for IBM API portlets as well as JSR 168 and 286 portlets.
With this feature, a component on a page can declare sources and targets for data transfer, such as a portlet or a navigation element. You launch a click-to-action event on a source portlet by clicking an icon to display a menu that lists targets for the action.
Both sources and targets are specified with HTML markup that contains special attributes to mark the HTML fragment as a click-to-action tag. In other words, the markup uses semantic tagging.
- Sources of click-to-action menus provide a data item that is potentially relevant for other components on the page. The data item has an associated type name that is used to determine the targets that can handle this data item.
- Targets specify the type name that they are interested in and a display title for the click-to-action menu item that represents the target entry. They provide a handler for the received data either as JavaScript code or as a server-side URL to which the data is sent when the menu item is selected.
Because both sources and targets are defined by semantic tags, all components that contribute HTML markup to a page can provide sources and targets. Such components include IBM portlets, JSR standard portlets, and theme and skin components, as well as WCM content or Web clippings.
Click-to-action events treat all source data as unstructured text. You can encode any information in the source value, but the target handler is responsible for decoding the received data appropriately.
Related concepts
Developing cooperative portlets
Client Side Programming Model Support
Related tasks
Inserting Client Side Click-to-Action code