The binary distribution of Pluto is packaged with Tomcat (currently version 5.5.9). Pluto leverages Tomcat to provide the web container in which the Pluto portlet container executes. The binary distribution includes the Pluto Portlet Container, The Portal Driver, the Pluto Testsuite and the Admin Portlet application.
To install the binary distribution:
The pluto library distributions are packaged to allow integration with an external portal server.
To install the library distributions to your portal server, ensure that the pluto-x.x.x.jar is loaded by a classloader to which both the portal and portlet application web apps have access.
Installing the source distribution requires the most effort, and is recomended only for those individuals who are interested in modifying the container. The source distribution is basically a snapshot of the source code repository at a given time. Because of this, please see the build instructions, which will provide information about how to build Pluto from scratch.
To install the source distribution into Tomcat:
| Property | Value | Example(s) |
|---|---|---|
| maven.tomcat.home | Tomcat Installation Directory | /usr/local/apache-tomcat.5.0.27, c:\\apache-tomcat.5.0.27 |
| maven.tomcat.version.major | Tomcat Major Version Number | 5 |
Currently, to automate the deployment/installation of portlets you must utilize the source distribution of pluto. Alternatively, you could use the Admin Portlet Application to install custom portlets.
In order to deploy a portlet application to pluto, you must follow the steps below:
Step 1: Assemble your portlet application into a valid war.
Step 2: Run the maven deploy goal on your war. This can be done by running this command line in the deploy subdirectory:
maven deploy -Ddeploy=/MyPathToMyPortlet/target/MyPortlet.war
Alternatively, there is an interactive ant script in the portlet-deploy directory that will perform the same task as the Maven deployment goal.
Step 3: Modify the Portlet Entity Registry and the Page Registry and Portlet Contexts files. These configuration files are located at:
The Portlet Entity Registry file requires that you specify an application and a Portlet ID for your new Portlet. The Application ID must be unique. It also needs to know the name of the Portlet so that it can go out and find it in the webapps path. Furthermore, this information is used to map the Portlet name to the appropriate class path for loading the class. The following is an example of some additions you can make to the entity registry file:
<application id="6">
<definition-id>MyPortlet</definition-id>
<portlet id="1">
<definition-id>MyPortlet.MyPortlet</definition-id>
</portlet>
</application>
The Page Registry provides Pluto with the layout information for your Portlet. The names used in the fragments must be unique as done in the following example:
<fragment name="MyPortlet" type="page">
<navigation>
<title>My First Portlet</title>
<description>...</description>
</navigation>
<fragment name="row3" type="row">
<fragment name="col3" type="column">
<fragment name="p4" type="portlet">
<property name="portlet" value="6.1"/>
</fragment>
</fragment>
</fragment>
... ...
</fragment>
The Portlet Contexts file (portletcontexts.txt) lists the webapp contexts for each portlet application that runs in Pluto. Each portlet app has a line in this file corresponding to a path and starting with a slash ('/'). In Tomcat, this path is the value of the 'path' attribute of the 'Context' element in a context XML descriptor in <TOMCAT_HOME>/conf/Catalina/localhost (or another 'conf' subdirectory).
The Admin Portlet Application allows you to deploy custom portlets using an interface in Pluto's portal. This application automatically places the custom portlets to their proper place and updates the registries.
Deploying a custom portlet application to Pluto using the Admin Portlet Application requires the following steps:
Check out the Deploy War Portlet's help mode (help link) for information on redeploying and undeploying portlets and troubleshooting problems.