Developing portlets

Get an overview of the process of creating portlets, learn about the concepts of the APIs used to develop portlets, and view the samples to get you started. Also, learn about integrating features such as single sign-on, cooperative sharing of information using the property broker, and migrating Struts applications to the portlet environment.

WebSphere® Portal supports portlets written to the standard portlet API.

If you are not an experienced Java™ developer...
you can quickly integrate many of your existing resources into WebSphere Portal without developing your own portlets.
If you have Java and servlet development experience but are new to portlet development...
you should start by reading Portlet concepts and Standard portlet API. When you are ready to start developing portlets, see Portlet creation basics for samples that demonstrate common features of the API.
If you have experience with Struts applications...
Struts Portlet Framework explains how to take an existing Struts application and convert it to a portlet.
If you are already familiar with portlet development using either the standard portlet API...
Portlet communication describes how you can enable portlets to share information with other portlets on the page, using the property broker service. Collaborative Services API and the person tag explains how you can integrate collaborative functionality into your portlets, such as online status, chat, and email.

Rational® Application Developer includes tools designed to help you develop portlet applications for WebSphere Portal.

Portlet concepts
Learn about portlets from a user's and an application developer's perspective. View a brief comparison between a portlet and a servlet and understand basic portlet concepts; know the effect of Java 2 security enablement on the operation of portlets that rely on certain privileges for processing.
Standard portlet API
The Java Portlet Specification addresses the requirements of aggregation, personalization, presentation, and security for portlets running in a portal environment.
Portlet services
Portlet services are used to provide common functionality to portlets. Each portlet service has its own service-specific interface for the functionality that it offers.
Struts Portlet Framework
Struts are no longer supported in IBM WebSphere Portal
Web 2.0 user interface features
Learn about portal features that pertain to the Web 2.0 generation type of Web user interface.
Client-side aggregation reference
Refer to programming model guidelines for client-side mode or server-side mode.
Portlet communication
IBM WebSphere Portal supports multiple ways for portlets to exchange or share information.
Dynamic user interfaces
Learn about dynamic user interfaces that include dynamic pages, dynamic portlets, dynamic UI configuration, dynamic UI properties, and shared dynamic UIs. Get an overview of how to develop a dynamic UI configuration.
Collaborative Services API and the person tag
Collaborative Services are a set of methods and JavaServer Page tags that allow developers who are writing portlets for WebSphere Portal or other application servers to add Lotus collaborative functionality to their portlets. The services can be used to develop new custom portlets, or to add collaborative functionality (for example, menus or person links indicating online status) to existing portlets.
IBM Portlet API
The IBM Portlet API is no longer supported starting with WebSphere Portal Version 8.5.0. You must convert portlets based on the IBM Portlet API to the Standard Portlet API. Learn how to convert IBM Portlets to Standard API portlets.
Portlet development reference
View important information and concepts related to portlet development.
Predefined public render parameters
WebSphere Portal defines a set of portal-specific public render parameters, which can be used to work with portal-specific state information within portlets.

Parent topic: Developing