Oracle9iAS Portal Developer Kit
Understanding the PDK-URL Services Runtime

A Web provider is one that is written as a Web application. It is installed and hosted in a Web server and is remote from Oracle9iAS Portal. Previously, a Web provider consisted only of the PDK-Java (JPDK) which meant development in Java, Java Servlets, and Java Server Pages. Now, with the addition of the PDK-URL Services, a Web provider manages a set of portlets in any language.

PDK-URL Services has extended the existing PDK-Java Framework to create portlets regardless of the programming language. The only requirement is that your application be accessible through a URL. To do this, PDK-URL Services offers a Provider Runtime that virtually eliminates programming requirements to create portlets. This article describes the JPDK Runtime as it relates to rendering URL-based portlets. For more information on the default configuration and usage of the JPDK Runtime, review Understanding the Web Provider Runtime.

PDK-URL Services Runtime extends classes from the current JPDK Runtime (JPDK Runtime) to adapt to the new URL rendering capabilities. The URL Services Runtime is comprised of the following runtime classes: URLProvider, URLPortlet, URLSecurityManager, URLRenderer, XMLFilter and HtmlFilter. These runtime class are located within the same package as the JPDK runtime classes, oracle.portal.provider.v1.http.

URLProvider

This class extends the JPDK Runtime class DefaultProvider. This class represents the Provider for all portlets rendered using PDK-URL Services and replaces the Provider class within the provider.xml file. This class performs the following tasks:

- Parses the extended XML tags at the portlet and provider level.

- Creates and sets cookies in session storage by logging into the Login URL.

- Manages a set of portlets.

- Creates an instance for each portlet specified in the provider.xml file.

- Creates an instance for each render mode specified and associates it with the value of its portlet tag.

URLPortlet

This class extends the JPDK Runtime class oracle.portal.provider.v1.http.DefaultPortlet. This class parses all of the XML content within the provider.xml referring to URL rendering.

URLSecurityManager

This class implements the JPDK Interface defined by oracle.portal.provider.v1.PortletSecurityManager. This class manages portlet access and security. The manager is responsible for authorizing (but not authenticating) the user, and checks whether the user is authorized to use this portlet.

URLRenderer

This class implements the JPDK Interfaces defined by oracle.portal.v1.PortletRenderer. The URLRenderer allows you to use the URL to render the content of a request. The URLPageRenderer takes advantage of the URLs specified in the provider.xml file to render pages for show mode and edit mode. It accesses the values from within the portletRender tags: pageUrl, urlContentType, and useAuthlinks.

XMLFilter

This class extends an abstract class called oracle.portal.provider.v1.BaseContentFilter. This filter converts the HTML contents received from a URL into XHTML. Then applies the stylesheet specified in the provider.xml file. The stylesheet provided as part of the PDK filters all unnecessary HTML tags and makes the existing HTML more appropriate for HTML table cells in Oracle9iAS Portal format.

HtmlFilter

This class extends an abstract class called oracle.portal.provider.v1.BaseContentFilter. This filter filters the HTML content parsed and verifies that the content is Oracle9iAS Portal compliant.

DefaultXhtml.xsl

The DefaultXhtml.xsl is a default stylesheet that converts XHTML to Oracle9iAS Portal compliant XHTML. It also performs most of the necessary screen scraping and filtering. this stylesheet can be extended to apply any other screen scrapping directives that are required.

Revision History:

- October 03, 2001.

- March 13, 2001.