Portlet container
The portlet container is the runtime environment for portlets using the JSR 286 Portlet specification, in which portlets are instantiated, used, and finally destroyed. The JSR 286 Portlet API provides standard interfaces for portlets and backwards compatibility for JSR 168 portlets. Portlets that are based on this JSR 286 Portlet Specification are referred to as standard portlets.
The PortletServingServlet servlet provides a simple portal framework, which builds on top of the portlet container. This servlet registers itself with each web application containing portlets. Use the PortletServingServlet servlet to directly render a portlet into a full browser page by a URL request and invoke each portlet by its context root and name. See Portlet Uniform Resource Locator (URL) addressability. Also, we can use the URL addressability feature to include remote portlet content using the remote request dispatcher (RRD).
To aggregate multiple portlets on a page, we can use the dedicated aggregation tag library, which is based on the PortletServingServlet servlet. See Portlet aggregation using JavaServer Pages for additional information. For coordination between portlets on a given page, the aggregation tag library supports the use of the Public Render Parameters, as specified by the JSR 286 Portlet Specification.
The portal framework, which is provided with the PortletServingServlet servlet, enables us to render only one portlet at a time. Thus, only a subset of the optional features in the JSR 286 Portal Specification are supported. To determine which optional features are supported, see Supported optional features of the JSR 286 Portlet Specification.
The brokering of events between portlets is out of the scope of the specification and is not handled by the PortletServingServlet servlet. For full portlet coordination support, we can deploy the portlets on comprehensive portal products, such as the WebSphere Portal Server.
We can disable the PortletServingServlet servlet in an extended portlet deployment descriptor called the ibm-portlet-ext.xmi file. See Example: Configuring the extended portlet deployment descriptor to disable PortletServingServlet.
Related:
Portlets Portlet URL addressability Remote request dispatcher Portlet aggregation using JavaServer Pages Supported optional features of the JSR-286 Portlet Specification Manage portlets Portlet container settings Remote request dispatcher considerations Example: Configuring the extended portlet deployment descriptor to disable PortletServingServlet JSR 168 Portlet Specification JSR 286 Portlet Specification Introducing the Portlet Specification, Part 1 Introducing the Portlet Specification, Part 2 Introducing Java Portlet Specifications - JSR 168 and JSR 286 Exploiting the WAS V6.1 portlet container What's new in the Java Portlet Specification V2.0 (JSR 286)