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Mashup toolbox

The widgets that users can add to a mashup page are organized in a toolbox. Users can use the default toolbox or customize it to their personal toolbox.

Depending on the used theme, the toolbox becomes visible when a user creates a new page or switches to Edit mode on an existing mashup page. The toolbox provides a collection of drawers that represent categories. These contain a number of widgets that users can drag onto the mashup page.

Administrators determine the initial layout for the toolbox, but they can leave it up to the individual users to customize it to best suit their needs.

By default all users get the same set of categories and widgets. When a user adds widgets from the hub, or removes them from the default toolbox, a personalized copy of the toolbox is made for that user and the changes are applied. From then on the user has a personalized version of the toolbox, which is persisted into the portal databases for that user.

Administrators can use different methods to determine which widgets to display to new users, or to make new widgets available to users who have already customized their toolbox. The default toolbox is defined as a catalog XML file and is stored in the portal WP Mashup Binary Config Service Resource Environment Provider (REP) in WAS. Administrators can update the widget list in the administrative console to suit their needs.


Include support

The use of include statements inside the toolbox definition xml file allows administrators to dynamically configure and control which categories and which widgets under these categories can be viewed. Administrators might want to add new widgets or remove obsolete widgets, and have this change reflected in all users' toolboxes, whether they are personalized or not. Note that widgets that were included by an include statement cannot be removed from the current toolbox. There are three types of include support:

Catalog level includes format

This allows you to dynamically include an entire catalog into the catalogs of users. When you want to make an addition to a catalog xml, locate the <include> as a child of the root <catalog> entry.

The titles and desciptions of the included category are merged with the titles and descriptions in the existing catalog. The locale specific infomation of the existing catalog takes precedent over that of the added category. This allows you to dynamically include multiple categories into a users toolbox.

Category level includes

This allows you to dynamically include a set of category entries from another catalog located in the portal Mashup Binary Config Service REP. When you want to make an addition to a catalog xml, locate the <include> as a child of an existing <category> entry. Only the entries will be represented in this toolbox for users, but not the he title and descriptions of the included category. Example:

<catalog>
   <category name="Demo">
      <title>Demo title ...</title>
      <description>Some descriptive text . . . </description>
      <include catalog="otherCatalog" category="CategoryP" />
      <entry> . . . existing native category entries . . . </entry>
   </category>
</catalog>

The example above presents a toolbox that contains a single category named Demo with the titles and descriptions set for the category as shown. The entries for this category will contain all native entries indicated by the <entry> tags, as well as all entries stored under the CategoryP category of a catalog named otherCatalog. Based on naming conventions, the WAS REP property for the other catalog is mashups.catalog_otherCatalog.xml.

Group includes

This allows you to define a dynamic catalog level include that is included based on group membership. The group inclusion requires no entries in XML files. Instead perform the following steps:

  1. Define a new catalog and import it into the portal Mashup Binary Config Service by using the import-config-file task.

  2. Map the required group DN to the catalog identifier by using the property com.ibm.mashups.catalog.group.includes in the portal Mashup Config Service REP. For the value for this property specify a JSON string that maps the DN to a catalog identifer.

Example:

  1. Create a new REP entry named mashups.catalog_admins.xml with categories of your choice and category entries XMl as the value.

  2. To map the default wpsadmins group to the admins catalog, specify the following JSON string for the property com.ibm.mashups.catalog.group.includes in the portal Mashup Config Service REP:

    {"cn=wpsadmins,o=defaultWIMFileBasedRealm": "catalog_admins.xml"}
    Result:

    This maps the default wpsadmins catalog to the admins catalog. When the wpsadmin user or other members of the wpsadmins group retrieve their catalog, the categories and widgets from the administrator catalog are merged with the default or personalized toolbox of that administrator.


Parent topic:

Overview of portal mashup integration