Open a JSP/Servlet in dialog box from portlet

In the last few days i talked about what are different options for opening a dialog box from portlet and but all those approaches have there disadvantages. So the easiest option would be to open a dialog box pointing to a Servlet or JSP that resides in same porltet application. THis approach wont work if you need any portlet context but should work otherwise.

I built this sample portlet to demonstrate what i mean. My Sample portlet has a popup.jsp and when ever you click on open popup.jsp button it opens popup.jsp in dialog box, i am passing userName parameter to the JSP. You can download the sample code for portlet from here

THe doView() method of sample portlet forwards control to index.jsp which looks like this

<%@page language="java" contentType="text/html; %>
<%@taglib uri="http://java.sun.com/portlet_2_0" prefix="portlet"%> 
<%@ taglib uri="http://java.sun.com/jsp/jstl/core" prefix="c" %>
<%@ taglib uri="/WEB-INF/tld/portal.tld" prefix="portal" %>

<portlet:defineObjects />

<script type="text/javascript">
<!--
function openPopup(popupUrl){
 if (window.showModalDialog) {
  window.showModalDialog(popupUrl,"name","dialogWidth:455px;dialogHeight:450px");
 } else {
  window.open(popupUrl,'name',
  'height=500,width=500,toolbar=no,directories=no,status=no,menubar=no,scrollbars=no,resizable=no ,modal=yes');
 }
}
//-->
</script>


<input type="button" 
onclick="openPopup('<%=renderResponse.encodeURL(renderRequest.getContextPath() + "/popup.jsp?userName=poup.jsp") %>')" 
value="Popup.jsp" />
 <br/>


I am creating URL to a JSP which resides in same portlet application like this renderResponse.encodeURL(renderRequest.getContextPath() + "/popup.jsp?userName=poup.jsp"). I am passing userName as parameter to the popup.jsp, i used a JSP but it can be a servlet


THis is how my poup.jsp looks like


<html>
<body>
Hello from popup.jsp 
<h1><%= request.getParameter("userName") %></h1>

</body>
</html>


The popup.jsp is pretty simple, all that it does is read value of userName request parameter and print it in HTML

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