Web Content Management and Liferay Variables

WEB CONTENT MANAGEMENT

Liferay’s Web Content Management (WCM) is a system which allows non-technical users to publish content to the Web without having advanced knowledge of Web technology or programming of any sort. Liferay Content Management System (CMS) empowers you to publish your content with a simple point-and-click interface, and it helps you to keep your site fresh.

You can use WCM to author both structured and unstructured content. Unstructured content is authored using an HTML-based WYSIWYG editor. Structured content is authored and displayed by combining Web Content Structures, Web Content Templates, and Web Contents. Structures and Templates are defined individually using a text editor or through the Liferay WCM UI.

Accessing Structure Elements

The following table shows how to access structure data from your Web Content Template code (when using Velocity templates; other template languages such as FreeMarker, XSL, or CSS have similar constructs). The variable name defined in the structure are denoted in bold and will be different depending on the name assigned in the structure.

Element Type	Velocity Template Accessors
Text Field	$tf.name,  $tf.data,  $tf.type
Text Box	$textbox.data
Text Area (HTML)	$textarea.data
Checkbox	$checkbox.data
Selectbox	$selectbox.data
Multi-Selection List	#foreach($selection  in  $mylist.options)
	$selection
	#end
Image Gallery	<img  src=”/image/image_gallery?img_id=$img.getData()”/>
Link to Page	$linkToPage.url
Repeatable	$el.siblings
Hierarchy	#foreach($child  in  $el.children)
	$child.data
	#end
Reserved Variables	$reserved-article-[id,version,title,create-date,modified-
	date,  display-date,author-id,author-name,author-email-
	address,author-comments,author-organization,author-
	location,author-job-title].data

Template and Theme Variables

The following table lists the most common built-in variables accessible from Velocity Template code (when using Velocity templates; other template languages such as FreeMarker, CSS, or XSL have similar constructs). For example, $layout.getChildren(). Items marked with an asterisk (*) are only available from Liferay Theme files.

Variable Name	Description
request	HTTPServletRequest object
company	The current company object. This represents the portal instance on
	which the user is currently navigating.
companyId	The current company ID.
groupId	ID of the group in which this web content is published.
locale	The current user's locale, as defined by Java.
randomNamespace	A randomized string.  It is very useful for creating IDs that are
	guaranteed to be unique.
browserSniffer	Dynamic browser capabilities.  e.g.$browserSniffer.isMobile()
portal	Current portal instance
portletURLFactory	Creates portlet URLs (action URLs, etc)
stringUtil	Useful string utilities
portletConfig*	Standard PortletConfig object  describing information from the
	portal.xml file.
renderRequest*	Standard Portlet RenderRequest object
renderResponse*	Standard Portlet RenderResponse object
themeDisplay*	Contains many useful items, such as the logged in user, the layout,
	logo information, paths, and much more.
user*	The User object representing the current user.
layoutSet*	The set of pages to which the user has currently navigated. Generally,
	communities and organizations have two: a public set and a private set.
scopeGroupId*	groupId that is used to identify the scope where the data of the
	current portlet is stored and retrieved.  The scope can represent a
	community, organization, user, the global scope, or a scope tied to a
	specific page.
timeZone*	The current user's time zone, as defined by Java.
viewMode	e.g. “print” when clicked print icon
fullTemplatesPath*	Path to all templates used.
pageTitle*	Title of the page
serviceLocator	Access to other Liferay services.  Note by default this variable is
	disabled, must be enabled via portal-ext.properties
prefsPropsUtil	Access to portal settings that were set from the Control Panel or
	through the portal.properties configuration file.
permissionChecker	An object which can determine given a particular resource whether or
	not the current user has a particular permission for that resource.
[css|images|javascrip	Full path to various theme files
t|templates]_folder*

LIFERAY ADMINISTRATION

Portal Properties

Liferay uses the concept of overriding the defaults in a separate file, rather than going in and customizing the default configuration file. The default configuration file is called portal. properties, and it resides inside of the portal-impl.jar file.

This .jar file is located in Liferay Portal’s WEB-INF/lib folder. If you have a copy of the Liferay source code, this file can be found in portal-impl/src. The file which is used to override the configuration is portal-ext.properties. This file can be created in your Liferay Home folder or anywhere in the application server’s classpath.

Database Setup

Out of the box, Liferay bundles are configured to use HSQLDB, which should only be used for development or demo purposes. You cannot use this database in production.

For production use, Liferay supports the following databases: MySQL, Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle Database, IBM DB2, PostgresSQL, and Sybase. Liferay can also connect to Apache Derby, Firebird, Informix, Ingres, or SAP DB. To use these databases, the database and user with appropriate access must be created, and the appropriate JDBC driver must

be available in your app server. Consult your database documentation for details on syntax and how to create databases and users.

To use a particular database, you must set the following four

properties in your portal-ext.properties.

MySQL Example:

1.	jdbc.default.driverClassName=com.mysql.jdbc.Driver
2.	jdbc.default.url=jdbc:mysql://localhost/lportal?
	useUnicode=true&characterEncoding=UTF-
	8&useFastDateParsing=false
3.	jdbc.default.username=
4.	jdbc.default.password=

Oracle Example:

jdbc.default.driverClassName=oracle.jdbc.driver.OracleDriver jdbc.default.url=jdbc:oracle:thin:@localhost:1521:xe jdbc.default.username=lportal

jdbc.default.password=lportal

It’s also possible to delegate this configuration to the application server through a DataSource by using the following property:

jdbc.default.jndi.name=NameOfDataSource

App Server Configuration

Liferay is supported on the following app servers or servlet containers: Geronimo, GlassFish, JBoss, Jetty, JOnAS, Oracle, Resin, Tomcat, WebLogic, and WebSphere. Consult your app server documentation for details on configuration. The following table lists common files that are involved in configuring your app server.

Tomcat 6.x	Location
Global Libraries	${TOMCAT_DIR}/lib/ext
Portal Libraries	${TOMCAT_DIR}/webapps/ROOT/WEB-INF/lib
Primary Configuration	${TOMCAT_DIR}/conf/server.xml
Primary Log Files	${TOMCAT_DIR}/logs/catalina.out
GlassFish 3.x	Location
Default Domain Directory	${GLASSFISH_DIR}/domains/domain1
Global Libraries	${GLASSFISH_DOMAIN_DIR}/lib
Portal Libraries	${GLASSFISH_DOMAIN_DIR}/applications/j2ee-modules/
	Liferay-portal/WEB-INF/lib
Primary Configuration	${GLASSFISH_DOMAIN_DIR}/config/domain.xml
Primary Log Files	${GLASSFISH_DOMAIN_DIR}/logs/server.log
JBoss 5.x	Location
Default Instance Directory	${JBOSS_DIR}/server/default
Global Libraries	${JBOSS_INSTANCE_DIR}/lib
Portal Libraries	${JBOSS_INSTANCE_DIR}/deploy/ROOT.war/WEB-INF/lib
Primary Configuration	${JBOSS_INSTANCE_DIR}/conf/jboss-service.xml
Primary Log Files	${JBOSS_INSTANCE_DIR}/log/server.log  ${JBOSS_INSTANCE_
	DIR}/log/boot.log

Troubleshooting and Debugging

The following items should be checked when troubleshooting a problem.

Item	Notes
Log Files	Log files for several app servers are listed above. These should be checked for
	warnings, errors, Java stack traces, etc.
Log Settings	Liferay uses the Apache Log4j library to perform all of its logging operations.
	See below on how to configure log settings.
JMX	Liferay provides out-of-the-box JMX MBeans, which allow introspection into
	the runtime, for example to identify and isolate problematic behavior such as
	poor cache performance or slow portlet rendering.
Debug	To attach a Java debugger to Liferay, you must start the JVM with special
	properties. Some servers have done this for you. For example, to start Tomcat
	under a debugger, run “bin/catalina.sh jpda start”
	Other servers may need the JVM properties added manually. A typical set of
	properties is:
	-Xdebug
	-Xrunjdwp:transport=dt_socket,server=y,suspend=n,address=5005