3

On a Java portal you can have portlets that include data provided by other applications. We want to replace our existing Java portal with a Django application, which means duplicating the Java portal's ability to display portlets. The two Sun specifications in question that we want to duplicate are JSR168 and JSR286.

I need a cPython solution. Not Jython or Java. Nothing against those tools, we just don't use them. For the record, the Jython based Portletpy does the opposite of what we are aiming to do.

Also, I suspect this question has been caused by a misunderstanding on our part of how the JSR168/JSR286 specification works. I think that JSR168/JSR286 is an arcane protocol for communicating some sort of content between separate applications, but in the Java world that tends to be done by other methods such as SOAP. Instead, the issue might be that these protocols are simply definitions of how to display content objects in views. If all we have to do is handle SOAP calls and display data, then this whole question is moot.

Simple architecture image below of what we think we want to do:

alt text

Community
  • 1
  • 1
pydanny
  • 7,954
  • 6
  • 34
  • 42
  • "provide portlet information"? Do you mean portlet configuration files? Or do you mean that a legacy Java portlet reads data from a legacy application and presents it? Please clarify this. – S.Lott Sep 04 '09 at 15:02
  • A legacy Java application reads data from a legacy application and presents it. Which is why I suspect that this is actually just a matter of providing a SOAP (or whatever) web service. – pydanny Sep 04 '09 at 20:24

2 Answers2

3

I'm not sure you can do this. From JSR 168:

JSR 168 Request/response Handling

If I understand correctly, you want the Django application to take the place of the existing "Java Portal/Portlet Container" in the diagram. Unfortunately, the interface between the portlet container and the individual portlets is using in-memory API calls, not as a Web service. There's no easy URL-like interface where you can call into the Java piece to get a chunk of HTML which you then incorporate into a Django-served page.

JSR 286 is an update and while it refines the mechanisms for communicating between portlets, as well as serving resources from portlets, it doesn't really change the above model radically.

I'm not saying it couldn't be done - just that there's no easy, standard way to do it.

Vinay Sajip
  • 95,872
  • 14
  • 179
  • 191
0

One way to get around this could be using a WSRP (Web Services for Remote Portlets, see Wikipedia) producer, that converts a JSR 168/286 into web services and consume them from django. But it seems that WSRP has not been very popular and I couldn't find any Python platform implementations (although partial works could exist). Beside this, I'm also interested in this topic.

erny
  • 1,296
  • 1
  • 13
  • 28