Liferay Portal 7 - Getting Started Guide - Hello World Portlet Module using Liferay IDE

This post is part of Liferay Portal 7 Getting Started Guide Series.

Now, it's time to get started with Liferay IDE for hello world liferay mvn portlet module development and deployment to Liferay Portal by following below quick steps.

Liferay Workspace and Module Project = Newly introduced concept of Liferay 7, and were not in Liferay 6.2.x or prior versions.

Prerequisite

• Basic Setup of Liferay IDE

Create Workspace Project

Liferay Workspace can be used to hold and manage Liferay projects, which is the official way to create Liferay 7.0 modules using Gradle. Let's create it using Liferay IDE -> New Liferay Workspace Project -> Give Workspace name and Finish. This should switch you to "Liferay Workspace" perspective, in case it was not by default. (In case you lose Liferay Perspective, then set it again using Window -> Perspective -> Other Perspective..)

While creating new workspace, don't select "Download liferay bundle" option, as we consider to deploy our hello world module into locally running Liferay portal instance which is outside of workspace. Alternatively, if you wish to auto generate liferay within workspace and deploy modules there, then this option can be used.

Note: If you’ve already created a Liferay Workspace and you’d like to import it into your existing IDE, you can do so by navigating to File -> Import -> Liferay -> Liferay Workspace Project. Then, click Next and browse for your worspace project. Once you’ve selected you workspace, click Finish.

After creating workspace project, let's proceed to create Hello World module project.

Create Hello World MVC Portlet Module Project

Select "modules" folder in workspace and use New Liferay Module Project option to create Liferay Module. Give your choice of project name (i.e. hello-world-mvc-portlet), select "mvcportlet" in Project Template name and click Finish. That's it. At this point we have our structure and our portlet default code underneath the modules folder in the workspace. Just quickly explore auto-generated code.

Note: If you look at the @ Component's property and you’ve been a Liferay developer, these should look familiar as they were once XML attributes that were previously in liferay-portlet.xml, liferay-display.xml, and portlet.xml. The options available are in liferay-portlet-app_7_0_0.dtd.

Refer Liferay documentation for more detail. Now, let's proceed to deploy it to Liferay Portal.

Deploy to Liferay Portal

First of all, start the Liferay portal server, if not yet!

IDE's "Liferay Workspace" perspective has "Gradle Tasks" view (Gradle is build tool, in case you don't know). Just click "deploy" option underneath your module's build category. This should generate "<your-module>.<version>.jar" file in "build/lib" folder underneath your module project folder within workspace. Ideally, this step should automatically deploy this jar bundle in locally running liferay portal on your machine (the way it happens in "blade deploy" command), however, somehow it's not deploying to liferay portal on my local setup! Therefore, I'll be showing how to deploy it manually in next step.

For manual deployment, just copy the generated portlet's jar file into "deploy" folder underneath the Liferay Portal Home folder. Then, this jar would disappeared automatically from deploy folder within few seconds. In console, you should see this message "… STARTED <your-portlet-module> [bundle-id]". Actually, Liferay installs this jar underneath "<TOMCAT_HOME>/osgi/modules" folder of Liferay Portal. See documentation for more detail.

Add custom Portlet on Site Page of Portal

Login to Liferay Portal as admin user. Add your hello world application on page (Add -> Applications -> Sample -> add portlet application). Additionally, try few text code changes in "view.jsp" file of hello world module and deploy again to see how it goes. At the end, if you wish, you can easily "Remove" custom portlet app from the page too.

Managing Liferay Modules Projects Lifecycle

Liferay 7.0 architecture offers modularity via OSGI. That means, different modules, so called OSGI bundles, can have their own lifecycle to start, restart, stop, etc. That can be managed using any of below options.

• "Gogo Shell" in IDE. Right-click the started portal in server view and select Open Gogo Shell. For example, one can see list of bundles containing "hello" word using this command: lb -s | grep "hello". See Gogo Shell commands documentation.
• Liferay Administration. Control Panel -> Apps -> App Manager. See documentation for more detail.

What's next?

As an alternate tooling of Liferay IDE, you may try Blade CLI tool for hello world liferay mvc portlet module development and deployment to Liferay Portal!

1. Install Blade CLI.
2. Create Workspace: blade init <workspace-name>
3. Create Hello World MVC Portlet Application as a Liferay Module: blade create -t mvcportlet -p [package name] -c [class name] [project name]
4. At this stage, you would have Gradle based project structure and initial code. Do necessary code changes using your choice of IDE.
5. Ensure local liferay portal instance is running on your machine. Deploying Module to Liferay Portal: blade deploy
6. Add application on site page by logging to liferay portal as admin user