- The Benefits of Inter-Portlet Communication
- The WebSphere Property Broker
- Creating a Service Provider
- Testing the Service Provider
- Creating a List Portlet
- Creating a Detail Portlet
- Configuring the WebSphere Property Broker
- Alternative Communication Methods
- When to Use Inter-Portlet Communication
- Summary
- Important Points
The WebSphere Property Broker
JSR-168 portlets do not natively support inter-portlet communication, but portlets can still communicate with each other in WebSphere Portal Server using a mechanism called the WebSphere Property Broker. The Property Broker is the preferred method of inter-portlet communication in WebSphere Portal, and it is the first communication method demonstrated in this chapter.
The WebSphere Property Broker can facilitate communication between portlets in different applications, and also between portlets that were built using different development tools. For example, a WPF portlet can send information to a standard Java JSR-168 portlet, and vice-versa. This makes it easy to maintain and extend your applications, and other developers can write portlets that communicate with your portlets without needing access to the source code.
The first few sections in this chapter focus on using the WebSphere Property Broker to set up inter-portlet communication between a library list portlet and a library detail portlet. The "Alternative Communication Methods" section then outlines some potential alternatives for communicating between portlets.