Chapter 11. Communicating with other portlets

 

This chapter covers

  • Inter-portlet communication using portlet sessions
  • Public render parameters
  • Portlet events
  • Portlet event support in Spring Portlet MVC
  • Pros and cons of different approaches to inter-portlet communication

In 2003, when Portlet 1.0 (JSR 168) was released, it didn’t define support for communication between portlets. The only way to achieve inter-portlet communication in the Portlet 1.0 days was by using PortletSession, which required communicating portlets to reside in the same portlet application. If you wanted a third-party portlet to communicate with your custom portlet, you had to package them as part of a single portlet application.

The lack of inter-portlet communication support also led to using portal server–specific approaches to achieve communication between portlets, resulting in portability issues. This limitation in Portlet 1.0 made inter-portlet communication one of the highly anticipated features in Portlet 2.0.

11.1. Why do you need inter-portlet communication?

11.2. An inter-portlet communication example

11.3. Inter-portlet communication using portlet sessions

11.4. Inter-portlet communication using public render parameters

11.5. Inter-portlet communication using portlet events

11.6. Summary