Quick velocity-jetspeed out-of-box fix

[Josh Hone <ic...@hotmail.com>]

Hi all -

I had an idea that could be a quick fix to some problems with Jetspeed 
out-of-the-box Velocity portlets.  There is at the beginning of using 
Jetspeed this problem that can make it hard to design interactivity
with your portal.  When you submit the simple Jetspeed-Velocity samples with 
changes, if you have more than one on the page, then a couple of things 
happen.

First, if you have templates with the same variable names, then the 
information that is submitted for a certain variable is put in with all 
portlets using templates with that same variable, thus sharing too much 
information potentially.

Second, if the velocity portlets that you have do not have their variables 
put back into the context, then they appear as $variableName and seem to 
forget their state until you leave the pane and come back to it.  So other 
velocity portlets on the page forget their state.

A simple fix is to include hidden parameters in the provided velocity 
templates that indicate a group or category the portlet is in.  Then, in the 
Action class, in doUpdate, there can be a simple if() statement at the top, 
which says that if the information submitted is something I should pay 
attention to, then I will pay attention to it.  If I am not supposed to pay 
attention to it, then I will just call buildNormalContext().

This then opens the door for a new portlet parameter, or the existing 
category/group ones, to determine which portlets share information with each 
other.

If this has been done already, or anything needs clarification, just let me 
know.  If anyone is interested, then it just takes the addition of a few 
lines to doUpdate and the templates to enact, and I can show you what I have 
odne in this regard.

R,
Josh Hone




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