Portlet Wiring Tool

The Portlet Wiring Tool allows you to configure connections, or wires, between cooperative portlets. You can access the Portlet Wiring tool for a page by going to Edit Layout section of a page and then going to Wires tab. You should get a screen like this




The Portlet Wiring Tool allows you to view the properties that portlets on the page can send or receive. If a match is available between two portlets, you can create a
wire between the two portlets. Existing wires may also be deleted using the tool..

The Portlet Wiring Tool also provides the functionality to implement cross-page portlet communication. Cross-page wires allow portlets to exchange properties across pages. Before creating a cross-page wire, the target page must have receiving actions defined as global on its portlets. Setting an action as global will also make that action available to Click-to-Action menus. To set an action as global, navigate to the target page and select Edit Page Layout from the drop-down menu on the title bar. Then select the Wires tab and click on Manage Actions. This will bring up a listing of the portlets on a page and their corresponding receiving actions.



As an alternative to the Portlet Wiring Tool, wires can also be created interactively in the portlet. Depending on the browser, users with sufficient permissions can create wires by holding either the CTRL or ALT keys and clicking an icon or hotspot in the portlet that is already associated with a Click-to-Action function. A dialog is displayed that allows the user to create a wire to other portlets on the page.


In order to view the tool itself, users must possess at least "User" role permissions on the page and the portlet. Further access checks are performed before allowing the user to view, create, or delete wires between portlets. The user must possess at least "User" role permissions on a page and the wired portlets on it to be able to view wires for the page. Users may also be able to create or delete personal wires, which affect their view of the page, or create or delete public wires, which affect all users' view of the page. Users must possess at least "Privileged User" role permissions on the page and "User" permissions on the portlets to be able to create or delete personal wires, while at least "Editor" role permissions are required on the page and "User" permissions on the portlets to be able to create or delete public wires.

Restrictions on Cooperative Portlet

These are the restrictions on the Cooperative portlets that apply to portlets developed using IBM Portlet API and Standard Portlet API

• The property broker does not support anonymous users. That is, for portlets on a page to transfer properties, the user must be logged in.


• The pop-up menu functionality requires browsers with JavaScript on the client.


• When multiple cross-page wires are triggered at the same time to different target pages, the first target page will have priority. Only the wires going to the first target page will work. The other events will be discarded.


• Wires created on a root page may not be created by default on any child derived page. They have to be recreated on the derived page.

Configure cooperative portlets

The term cooperative portlets refers to the capability of portlets on a page to interact with each other by sharing information. The WPS supports cross-page portlet communication for cooperative portlets, allowing portlets on different pages to communicate

Cooperation between source and target portlets is faciliated by by a WPS runtime entity called the property broker. The Cooperative portlets subscribe to a model of declaring, publishing and sharing information with each other using WPS property borker. Each portlet that wants to act as either producer or consumer declares its intention using a .wsdl file. At the time of installing a portlet WPS will read the .wsdl file and make entries in database about data type that portlet can either consume or produce. After installing a portlet administer should create a connection between source and target portlet using Portlet Wiring portlet. The Portlet wiring Portlet allows you to create connection only if the source and target portlet has matching data type.

There are some differences between the portlets developed using IBM Portlet API and Standard portlet API when it comes to cooperative portlets

1) You can create wire only between either two portlets developed using IBM Portlet API or two portlets developed using Standard Portlet API. You cannot create wire between a portlet developed using IBM Portlet API and a portlet developed using Standard Portlet API even if they have matching data type.

2)The Portlets developed using IBM Portlet API can publish a property either decleratively i.e. if wire is created between two portlets or programmatically using the Property Broker service API. But the portlets developed using Standard Portlet API can publish property only decleratively.

3) The Portelts developed using IBM portlet API's can use Click-to-Action, What that means is they can use C2A tags in the JSP for generating markup. Once you do that when you click on property it will display a context menu with list of all the consumer portlets for that portlet. You can click on one of the items in the menu to send event to consumer or you can broadcast that event to all the portlets who can consume that property. The Standard Portlets cannot use C2A JSP tags for publishing.

During the event phase, the property broker delivers notifications to cooperative portlets, and the cooperative portlets can notify the property broker of property value changes. An action may be delivered on one portlet as the result of a user clicking on an action link generated by the portlet in its markup. If cooperative portlets are used, this may result in other actions being triggered on other portlets. At any point during the event phase, a portlet may publish the value of an output property to the property broker. The portlet may provide a value at any time during the event phase. The property broker determines what needs to be done with the values. If wires exist for this property, the property broker will deliver the property value to the actions specified by the target end of the wires. This process may continue recursively; the property broker detects loops and breaks them. The property broker guarantees the completion of all property value notifications to target portlets by the end of the event phase.