Developing

Developing for IBM® WebSphere® Portal Express® includes developing portlets, extending the applications that are provided with the portal, and more. WebSphere Portal Express includes IBM Web Experience Factory to help you start developing quickly. You can also use IBM WebSphere Studio Application Developer.

Changing to a developer mode environment
Install IBM WebSphere Portal Express and then immediately change to a developer mode environment. Use this environment when you develop applications, themes, portals, and portlets. Startup performance is improved within a developer mode environment.
Dojo and WebSphere Portal Express
WebSphere Portal Express contains an instance of the IBM Dojo Toolkit, a JavaScript library that is based on the Dojo Toolkit. When you develop components that use Dojo, you must be aware of how the portal uses Dojo, and the tips and restrictions when you use Dojo.
Extending WebSphere Portal class path
Custom code must either be added by a PAA or as APP through the administrative console. Adding custom code in shared application or wp_profile/classes is critical because it can be overwritten, deleted by updates or migration.
Developing themes and skins
You can create themes using modules to contribute to separate areas of pages to provide flexibility, enhance the user experience, and maximize performance. To optimize themes on your website, use the theme optimization module framework. The framework separates feature-specific logic and capabilities from the theme code.
URL generation in WebSphere Portal
Generating Portal URLs correctly is one of the most important tasks in programming a WebSphere Portal Express based application. There are several programming tools and techniques available for generating WebSphere Portal Express URLs in custom code. The following section introduces the programming tools available and discusses when it is most appropriate to use each of the tools.
Model SPI overview
Models provide information that is needed by WebSphere Portal Express to perform tasks such as content aggregation or building navigation to browse the aggregated content. The information that is aggregated is represented through models that can be accessed programmatically by using the Model SPI (read-only). The information of a model is usually persistent (stored in a database) but can also be transient (computed and stored only in memory). Models can be represented by using a tree structure (nodes have a parent-child relationship), a list structure, or a selection structure (a selected element in a tree structure).
Controller SPI
You can use the Controller SPI for portal administration. It allows you to modify portal resources. It enhances the read-only portal Model SPI by adding writable aspects.
User and group management
The Portal User Management Architecture (PUMA) System programming interface (SPI) provides interfaces for accessing the profiles of a portal User or Group.
Portal Access Control interfaces
Portal Access Control provides interfaces for retrieving and modifying and access control information of portal resources, such as portlets or pages.
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.
The Script Application
The Script Application enables script developers to create portlets for IBM WebSphere Portal Express with HTML, JavaScript, and CSS.
The IBM Web Content Manager API
You can use the Web Content Manager API to extend functions of Web Content Manager.
Search REST API specification
The following document describes the API call to search IBM WebSphere Portal Express. You can search WebSphere Portal Express to find content that contains a specific text string in its title or content, or is tagged with a specific tag.
Extending tagging and rating by using service APIs
Developers can enhance and extend the tagging and rating features of the portal. For this purpose the portal tagging and rating feature provides service APIs that you can use to enhance tagging and rating by your requirements.
How to create a custom launch page
You can configure an authoring portlet to use a launch page of your own design instead of the default user interface.
How to create a custom HTML editor integration
You can use custom HTML editors in all HTML fields of the authoring interface or specific HTML elements that are defined in an authoring template. Custom HTML fields are used to integrate third-party editors into the authoring interface.
How to use remote actions
Remote actions are used to trigger actions from the IBM Web Content Manager application.
How to create custom plug-ins
A custom plug-in is a reusable Java class that you create to run a task. You can create custom plug-ins such as custom workflow actions, plug-ins to run when a page is rendered, plug-ins to store multi-locale text strings and plug-ins to run when a file is uploaded.
IBM Digital Data Connector (DDC) for WebSphere Portal Express
You can use the IBM Digital Data Connector (DDC) for WebSphere Portal Express framework to integrate data from external data sources on your portal pages by using IBM Web Content Manager presentation components. External data means that the data does not need to be stored directly in IBM Web Content Manager. For example, you can use DDC to render social data that you have on your IBM Connections server or on other social platforms in the context of your portal pages. Other possible data sources include news feeds, task lists, product catalog information, to name just a few.
Determining the current web content context
To determine the current web content context of a portal page or Web Content Viewer portlet, you can use the WCM Page Context Service. This service provides the ID of the currently rendered item of a page or portlet.
REST service for Web Content Manager
Application developers can use Representational State Transfer (REST) services to work with Web Content Manager. The REST service for Web Content Manager provides authoring access to content items and elements. The service follows the Atom Publication Protocol, and Atom feeds, and entries are accessible in XML (application/atom+xml) and JSON (application/json) format.
How to display data from external sources
You display data from external sources by using the same methods as you would when you create a website.
Instrumenting web content for Active Site Analytics
You can collect information from web content for Active Site Analytics.
Java messaging services for web content
Web Content Manager supports for the notification of events such as item state changes, or services starting and stopping. These notifications can be delivered as messages to the Java messaging service.
Developing basic PAA file applications
Solution developers can create their own Portal Application Archive (PAA) files. The developers can then use the configuration wizard to add on their applications to their IBM WebSphere Portal Express environment.
Developing advanced PAA file applications
Developers can create their own advanced Portal Application Archive (PAA) file. The advanced PAA file contains custom content. The developers can then use the configuration wizard to add on their applications to their IBM WebSphere Portal Express environment.
IBM UX Screen Flow Manager
The IBM UX Screen Flow Manager helps operators, developers, and dialog modelers develop fine-granular, small split portlets. Portlets provide the functions for the steps that are presented as screens. You can configure the sequence, transitions, and workflow of a set of screens. Screen flows work like wizards and process the screens to complete the task for the user. Screen flows are completed by a single user and have a short lifetime.

Parent topic: IBM WebSphere Portal Express V8.5 and V9 documentation