Rendering Portlet best practice

Portal Express, Version 6.0
Operating systems: i5/OS, Linux, Windows

Rendering Portlet best practice

This topic describes some best practice tips for using rendering portlets.

User authentication

User authentication to rendering portlets is managed by IBM^® WebSphere^® Portal Express and IBM WebSphere Application Server. See Configuring security for further information.

When displaying content from multiple servers using rendering portlets you should enable single sign-on between the servers. See Implementing single sign-on to minimize Web user authentications in the WebSphere Application Server information center for details.

User access to Web Content Management content and components
Users will only be able to view content and components that either their Portal user's logon or a credential vault slot has access to. If a Portal user's logon or a credential vault slot does not have sufficient rights in Web Content Management to view a Web Content Management content or component, errors may occur.

Content and component design
Not all content or components built in a Web Content Management solution are suitable for inclusion within a IBM WebSphere Portal Express page:

Web Content Management content or components to be displayed within a WebSphere Portal Express page should be self-contained and not rely on other Web Content Management content or components.
When creating presentation templates or page styles to use when displaying Web Content Management content within a portlet, it is best practice to reference just the content you would like to display. Components, such as menus and navigators, should be displayed in separate portlets and linked to the Content Portlet as required.
JavaScript URLs will not work.

Using JavaScript with Web Content Management
When a web page is rendered via the Web Content Management application, some tags may be rewritten. The Web Content Management application uses double quotes for attributes in HTML tags. If you use JavaScript to produce HTML tags, the Web Content Management application will not recognize them if you use single quotes.

Path component tags

The URLs generated by the path component will be fully qualified when viewed through a portal. To generate URLs with no prefix, use the following "Type" parameters instead of the standard parameters:

Type="noprefixbase" instead of Type="base"
Type="noprefixservlet" instead of Type="servlet"
Type="Prefix". When viewed through portal the, prefix value will be printed. If no prefix exists then empty string is returned.

Use remote rendering portlets with credential vault authentication
When using remote rendering portlets that are configured to use content from remote WebSphere Portal Express servers, either:

Disable LTPA. This is because with LTPA enabled without single sign-on, you will be logged out each time you access a different server. If single sign-on is enabled with LTPA, the user will be granted the same access rights of the credential vault user.
Use a different domain name for the server hosting the remote rendering portlet.
Enter an IP address instead of a domain name when configuring the remote rendering portlet.

Configure the remote rendering portlet to connect to a clustered Web Content Management URL

You may receive errors when using the remote rendering portlet to connect to a clustered Web Content Management URL. This occurs when the WebSphere Portal Express Server and the Web Content Management server are accessed by the same host. This is because they are both trying to use the same cookie. By default, an Application Server uses a cookie with the name of JSESSIONID as the key to maintain session for that host. Since the Web Content Management server is accessed by the same host, the Portal Server cookie overwrites the Web Content Management cookie that maintains the session and vice versa. Logout is the result of losing a session.

There are four possible solutions:

Use local rendering portlets Local rendering portlets can be used to access the same content on different servers in a clustered environment.
Use the IP address You can use the IP address of the Web Content Management server instead of the HOST name when configuring the portlet.
Assign two host names You can assign two host names to the server running both WebSphere Portal Express Server and Web Content Management and use one host name for Web Content Management and the other when configuring the portlet. There are two ways of doing this:

Assign two IP addresses to the Web Content Management server and assign a different host name to each IP.
Assign two Host names to the same IP in a DNS.

Change the default cookie name You could also change the default cookie name used by one of the servers:

Log in to the WebSphere Application Server administrative console.
Select Servers -> Application Servers -> WebSphere_Portal
Select Web Container Settings -> Session management.
Click on the "Enable Cookies" link. (Leave it checked.)
Change the cookie name from JSESSIONID to JSESSIONID2.
Click Apply and then Save the changes
Restart WebSphere Portal Express.

Exporting remote rendering portlets

If the create-oids option is set to "true" when exporting portal pages containing remote rendering portlets, you will need to edit the configuration of the remote rendering portlet on the server the portal page has been exported to. and re-select the page to broadcast to if using the "another page" broadcast link option. See Linking portlets for further information.

Other limitations

The results of a POST in a form are only displayed within the portlet that sent the POST. You cannot send the result of a POST to another portlet.
Web Content Management cannot be accessed behind a firewall. This is because Web Content Management will still need to be accessed directly for images and other resources.
An anonymous WebSphere Portal Express Server user will also be classed as an anonymous Web Content Management user. so that the logon override does not work for anonymous users.
If a Web Content Management proxy server is being used with Rendering Portlets, all URLs rewritten by the proxy will not be fully-qualified, but server-relative instead. To address this issue, redirect mappings can be created in the HTTP Server configuration that will pass the URLs to the proxy server.
Web Content Management caching features and category selection trees cannot be used with the Local Rendering Portlet .

Parent topic:
Displaying content in a rendering portlet

Use local rendering portlets	Local rendering portlets can be used to access the same content on different servers in a clustered environment.
Use the IP address	You can use the IP address of the Web Content Management server instead of the HOST name when configuring the portlet.
Assign two host names	You can assign two host names to the server running both WebSphere Portal Express Server and Web Content Management and use one host name for Web Content Management and the other when configuring the portlet. There are two ways of doing this: Assign two IP addresses to the Web Content Management server and assign a different host name to each IP. Assign two Host names to the same IP in a DNS.
Change the default cookie name	You could also change the default cookie name used by one of the servers: Log in to the WebSphere Application Server administrative console. Select Servers -> Application Servers -> WebSphere_Portal Select Web Container Settings -> Session management. Click on the "Enable Cookies" link. (Leave it checked.) Change the cookie name from JSESSIONID to JSESSIONID2. Click Apply and then Save the changes Restart WebSphere Portal Express.