May 3, 2015 Harmeet Singh

Getting started AngularJS with Liferay Portal

After reading the title of this post the first question comes in your mind is “Can we use AngularJS with Liferay?”
and my answer is yes we can. Now your thinking why AngularJS? I will give the answer of your all questions in this article.

What is AngularJS?

Angular js is open source web application development framework developed by Misko Hevery and maintained by Google. AngularJS architecture based on MVC(Model – View – Controller). MVC pattern help you to manage separately presentation, data, and logic components. server-side services are offered by Angular, like view-dependent controllers, to client-side web applications.

These are the some remarkable features:

HTML Declarative approach:This feature help you to declaring dynamic views in static web-applications. For your application, AngularJS facilitates you to extend HTML vocabulary. The consequential ssetting is especially expressive, readable, and quick to develop.
Easy Data Binding : AngularJS Two-way data binding is its most distinctive feature, and it reduces the amount of write dynamic code.
Reusable Components: Using AngularJS directives help you to make your component reusable.
Dependency Injection: You can easily inject dependencies of other modules in your web Application. Dependency injection is also a core to AngularJS.
End to end Integration Testing / Unit Testing: While writing a code for application, we also need write test cases. Angular is designed makes testing your application easy by using dependency Injection feature that makes testing components much easier then any other frameworks. Jasmine and Karma are the testing tool which we use in angular application
Routing: This feature allows to make your SPA website much easier.
Templating: Dynamically creating and updating HTML based on templates.
Services: you can use server side services in angular to make your web application dynamic.

If you are thinking to develop Angular Web Application in LIferay Developer Studio then Before starting to write a code you must know how to configure AngularJS in your liferay. It’s reduce your efforts to develop and maintain your Angular Web Application in Liferay. You can also write individual portlet in AngularJS. So in this article i am going to make a Independent News List portlet with the help of JSON Array in Angular.

Creating a liferay portlet

Go to the package Explorer > Right click New > Select Liferay Plugin Project

See Figure 1

If you want to setup AngularJS in Liferay developer studio. Read this article

or you can directly add the AngularJs Library in your theme or You can add directly in your portlet as well.

　　<script src="${themeDisplay.pathThemeJavaScript}/lib/angular.min.js"></script>

1	<script src="${themeDisplay.pathThemeJavaScript}/lib/angular.min.js"></script>

Now start write your code in portlet main.js file.

In this article you can see how Angular makes browsers intelligent— without the use of any other third party plugins.

What you Learn in this article:-

Examples of how to use client-side data binding to build dynamic views of data that change immediately in response to user actions.
See how Angular sync your data in view without the need for DOM manipulation.
Learn a better, easier way to create AngularJS based portlet that works independently with your application

Getting Started

AngularJS is using HTML Declarative Approach to write and extend HTML code with custom attributes and elements. It’s also helps you to in Data Binding. You have to create one pure static HTML page then examine how we can convert this HTML code into a template that angular will use to display dynamic data.

So here is Static HTML code:-

<ul>
		<li>
			<a href="#"><img src="" alt="news-img"/></a>
				<div class="news-desc">
					<h4></h4>
					<p></p>
				</div>
			</li>
			<li>
			<a href="#"><img src="" alt="news-img"/></a>
				<div class="news-desc">
					<h4></h4>
					<p></p>
				</div>
		</li>
	</ul>

<ul>

<li>

<p></p>

</div>

</li>

<li>

<p></p>

</div>

</li>

</ul>

In AngularJS, the view is a magnification of the model through the HTML template so whenever we change anything in the model angular refreshes the same binding points and updates in the view.

The view component is frame by Angular from this template:

docroot/view.jsp:

<div ng-app="NewsListApp" class="NewsListApp">
	<ul ng-controller="NewsListCtrl">
		<li ng-repeat="news in newslist">
			<a href="{{news.url}}" class="news-img">
				<img src="{{news.img}}" alt="news-img"/></a>
				<div class="news-desc">
					<h4><a href="{{news.url}}">{{news.title}}</a></h4>
					<p>{{news.desc}}</p>
				</div>
			</li>
	</ul>
</div>

<h4><a href="{{news.url}}">{{news.title}}</a></h4>

</div>

</li>

</ul>

</div>

We replaced the HTML news list with the ngRepeat directive and Angular expressions:

The ng-repeat=”news in newslist” attribute in the
tag is an Angular repeater directive. The repeater tells Angular to create a
element for each news in the list using the
tag as the template.
The expressions wrapped in curly braces {{ }} will be replaced by the value of the expressions.

We have added a new directive, called ng-controller, which attaches a NewsListCtrl controller to the parent tag.

The expressions in curly braces {{ }} show bindings, which are referring to our NewsListApp model, which is set up in our NewsListCtrl controller.

Now Build your portlet. After completing successful build go to your browser open your localhost site and just drag the portlet in layout to see the result.

Note: We have specified to load Angular Module using ng-app=”NewsListApp”, where NewsListApp is the name of our module. This module will contain the NewsListCtrl.

March 24, 2015 Harmeet Singh

Color schemes in liferay theme

Creating a color schemes in liferay will help you to change the look and feel immediately with a CSS class name, which of course also help you to choose different background images, different border colors, and more.

Creating a Color Schemes

Here’s how you can define your color schemes in liferay-look-and-feel.xml:

<theme id="hm-blue" name="HM Blue">
    <settings>
        <setting key="my-setting" value="my-value" />
    </settings>
    <color-scheme id="01" name="Blue">
        <css-class>blue</css-class>
        <color-scheme-images-path>
            ${images-path}/color_schemes/${css-class}
        </color-scheme-images-path>
    </color-scheme>
    <color-scheme id="02" name="Grey">
        <css-class>grey</css-class>
    </color-scheme>
</theme>

</settings>

<color-scheme id="01" name="Blue">

<css-class>blue</css-class>

<color-scheme-images-path>

${images-path}/color_schemes/${css-class}

</color-scheme-images-path>

</color-scheme>

<color-scheme id="02" name="Grey">

<css-class>grey</css-class>

</color-scheme>

</theme>

Create a color_schemes folder inside your _diffs/css folder, and place a .css file in it for each color scheme. we can have either one file called grey.css or we can use both blue.css and grey.css to specify each scheme. Let’s use the better option here, creating both files to define our color schemes.

Place the following lines at the bottom of your custom.css file:

@import url(color_schemes/blue.css);
@import url(color_schemes/grey.css);
The color scheme CSS class is placed on the <body> element, so you can use it to identify your styling. In blue.css, prefix all your CSS styles like this:
body.blue { background-color: #0000FF; }
.blue a { color: #fff; }
In grey.css, prefix all your CSS styles like this:
body.grey{ background-color: #E4E4E4;; color: #000; }
.grey a { color: #000; }

@import url(color_schemes/blue.css);

@import url(color_schemes/grey.css);

The color scheme CSS class is placed on the <body> element, so you can use it to identify your styling. In blue.css, prefix all your CSS styles like this:

body.blue { background-color: #0000FF; }

.blue a { color: #fff; }

In grey.css, prefix all your CSS styles like this:

body.grey{ background-color: #E4E4E4;; color: #000; }

.grey a { color: #000; }

You can create separate thumbnail images for your color schemes. The element tells Liferay where to look for these images (you only have to place this element in one color scheme for it to affect both). For our example, create the folders _diffs/images/color_schemes/blue and_diffs/images/color_schemes/grey. In each folder place a thumbnail.png and screenshot.png file, according to the specifications defined in the Thumbnails section in Liferay Theme.

March 21, 2015 Harmeet Singh

Theme Development in Liferay

LiferayUI blog will help you make you own theme to customize your liferay’s portal appearance and impression. With themes, you can alter the user interface completely that it becomes difficult yet impossible to identify that the site is running on Liferay.

Liferay’s theme inherits the styling, images, and templates from any of the built-in themes. This saves your time and keeps your themes smaller and less cluttered, because your theme contains only its own resources, using defaults for the rest, like Templates,Js,Images and CSS.

Theme Development in liferay is easy to create. You can start by making changes in the CSS files. When you need to customize themes more extensively, you can change the HTML Templates.

If you hope to become a Liferay theme development and customization expert, there are several technologies you should know:

CSS: Create a new theme simply by modifying a CSS file.

Velocity: Customize the markup generated by the theme.

JavaScript: Add special behaviors to your theme.

XML: Some theme settings are specified in XML.

Creating a Theme

Our theme will be named HM Blue, so the project name (without spaces) is hm-blue, and the display name (which can have spaces) is HM-Blue. Let’s create the theme using Liferay Developer Studio first, and then with the terminal (Command Prompt).

Using Developer Studio:

Go to File → New → Liferay Project.

Fill in HM-blue for the Project name and HM Blue for the Display name.

Select the build type, Plugins SDK, and Liferay runtime.

See this link if you Using Liferay IDE with Maven for more information. Otherwise, select the Ant build type.
For more information, see sections Installing the SDK and Setting Up Liferay IDE.

Select Theme for your Plugin type.

Click Next.

Figure 1 : Make sure to select the Theme plugin type for your theme.

Setting a base Theme

Now you have to Select a theme parent. In Liferay you have two base theme, all themes are built on the top of it, which is assign style and unstyled. Your newly created theme is based on these by default, but they contain very limited styling. You can take advantage of an existing theme’s styling by setting the theme of your choice as the base for your theme. styled theme providing the most basic elements. When you set a different base theme, it’s added on top of styled and overrides the default styling wherever there are differences. After the base themes are added, your own custom styling is affixed on top.

Figure 1.1 : Make sure to select the Theme plugin type for your theme.

By Default it’s select _styled theme. Adding together in to the _styled theme, from the unstyled theme you can select the inherit, which includes no styling. There’s also the classic theme that has a smooth look and feel and works well. For now, select _styled as the theme parent.

Select your theme’s framework. You can select the Freemarker or Velocity template frameworks for your theme. Or you can select JSP as your theme’s framework. For now, select _Velocity framework template framework. See figure 1.1

Click Finish.

To specify a base theme, edit the build.xml file for your theme and change _styled in to the name of any existing theme that’s installed or in your Plugins SDK. Now that your base theme is set, let’s deploy the theme to your portal instance.

Theme Deployment

If you’re already familiar with portlet deployment then theme deployment will be a piece of cake! You can deploy your theme in Developer Studio or the terminal (Command Prompt).

Deploying in Developer Studio: Click and drag your theme project onto your server.

After deploying, your server outputs messages in console to indicating your plugin is available for use.

Reading plugin package for hm-blue-theme

Registering themes for hm-blue-theme

1 theme for hm-blue-theme is available for use

Let’s apply your theme to a page:

Go to your web browser and log in to the portal.

Hover over Manage at the top of the page and click on Page.

Directly underneath the words Manage Pages, select the Look and Feel tab. Click on your theme to activate it.

Redploy

Now that you’ve built and redeployed a theme, let’s see the hierarchy of theme.

March 15, 2015 Harmeet Singh

Summary of AlloyUI

AlloyUI provides you UI components which we can scale according to our requirements and consistent look and feel for your application. It’s a structure enclosing JavaScript extensions of Yahoo UI (YUI). YUI’s modules and add up its own components to provide you the awesomeness UI. AlloyUI also using Twitter Bootstrap to make and update the styling of components easy.

Why AlloyUI

AlloyUI component is built on top of YUI.
YUI help you to build high quality production-level widgets quickly.
YUI has a flexible, elegant architecture that is easy to extend. It is useful in both small as well as large scale projects.

YUI helps to reduce the size of your up-front JavaScript’s request download, and lazily loads other modules as needed. For the developer, Liferay provides special tag libraries that let you designate JavaScript for parsing only after your page’s HTML and CSS have been loaded. This often speeds up the availability of your UI to your user.

Now a days, as we know, many of the developers in the Liferay community likes to use jQuery but in the current version of liferay 7 gives the freedom to developer to use any javascript framework. we can also use any third party libraries like angular,react , vue etc.

Note: AlloyUI Library is available to you in Liferay old versions.

March 15, 2015 Harmeet Singh

What is liferayUI?

The user interface of Liferay CMS consists of Portal that contain UI elements. The UI element is a page or a part of the page that contains CMS that is shown to the end user. The UI Personalization is available to extend to the UI elements like Menu,Tabs,forms,text and group of controls etc. There is lot’s of framework available in the market to customize your UI of Application. AlloyUI is one of the UI frame which is developed on top of the YUI3 that offers an easy API for constructing high scalable applications. It’s maintained by liferay engineers. When you develop component using AlloyUI scripts in the portal, you can reuse them anywhere else.

LIFERAY UI

LIFERAY UI

Category: Liferay Theme

Getting started AngularJS with Liferay Portal

What is AngularJS?

These are the some remarkable features:

Creating a liferay portlet

Getting Started

Color schemes in liferay theme

Creating a Color Schemes

Theme Development in Liferay

Creating a Theme

Setting a base Theme

Theme Deployment

Summary of AlloyUI

Why AlloyUI

What is liferayUI?