Developing custom portlets

To develop a Dashboard portlet in Integration Studio, you need to write a Java class that extends the GenericPortlet class provided by the Java Portlet API (version 1.0).

More specifically, a portlet is based on the following files:

• A Java class that extends javax.portlet.GenericPortlet
• A set of JSP (JavaServer Pages) pages that provide different views for this portlet
• A deployment descriptor file, portlet.xml, that describes how to deploy and execute the portlet, and some other deployment descriptors for additional details.

The Dashboard Application Programming Interface (API) allows you to use the Dashboard framework in your portlets; the Dashboard API is provided by the com.neptuny.cpit.web.portlet.PortletHelper class and its related tag libraries.

Before getting started with developing portlets, BMC recommends that you familiarize yourself with portlet mechanisms, and in particular with Preference and Parameter concepts of a portlet.

The following sections explain how to use the Dashboard API to develop a new portlet:

• Utilizing Dashboard API methods to develop portlets
• Creating a portlet project
• Deploying a portlet project
• Debugging a portlet project