Category: Liferay

Bootstrap 3 with Liferay 6.2

In Current Liferay version 6.2 we have bootstrap 2.3.2 as default theme library.Bootstrap 3 was released on August 19th, 2013, before releasing Liferay 6.3. Bootstrap 3 completely dropped support for IE7 and below. While Liferay 6.2 provided limited support for IE7 and below. So here are some of the distinctive differences between Bootstrap v2.3 and v3.0:

BootstrapĀ 3

BootstrapĀ 2.3.2

Grids:Ā Fluid (480px, 768px, 992px, 1200px) Flat Design: Gradients are no longer available in V3.0
Grids:Ā Fluid and fixed (724px, 940px, 1170px; below 768px are single column and vertically stacked) CSS3 gradients and box shadows
Columns Classes: .col-xs-1, .col-sm-1 .col-md-1, .col-lg-1, .col-xs-2, .col-sm-2 .col-md-2, .col-lg-2 .span1,.span2

For know more in detail please go to this link:- http://getbootstrap.com/migration/

Creating Theme with Bootstrap 3 in Liferay 6.2

These are some basic steps for creating Theme with Bootstrap 3. In some of the steps are same except few additional Steps.

  1. In Liferay Devloper Studio, Go to –> File – New – Liferay Plugin Project.
  2. Provide the Name inside Project Name Text Box (say Test).
  3. Select the Plugin Type as – Theme and click Next.
  4. Select Theme parent – _styled and Theme framework – Velocity. Click Finish.
  5. A new Theme (Test-theme) will be created.
  6. Inside _diffs folder create css, images, js and templates folder.
  7. Copy and paste the required files in the corresponding folders as needed.
    1. Download Bootstrap 3 CSS file and place it inside _diffs – css
    2. Open Main.css and call the Bootstrap 3 css file above custom.css
  8. Modify the files as explained.

Liferay 6.2 Basic Structure: [Two Column Layout]

These are the some comman classes who are conflict with Bootstarp 2.3 in liferay 6.2.

Animated layouts in Liferay using Isotope JS

This article will help you to learn and how we can use isotope javascript library in our project. Isotope javascript library who developed by the David DeSandro. Isotope provides animated sorting and filtering in UI elements. It uses Masonry and packery layouts in addition to other layouts.

I found both of them before some days when i started working in one of my project and it’s so amazing, I whipped up a few demos to see for myself!

Install Isotope

For installation we need to download these isotope library from isotopeĀ website.

  • isotope.pkgd.js un-minified, or
  • isotope.pkgd.min.js minified

Package managers

  • Install with Bower: bower install isotope –save
  • Install with npm: npm install isotope-layout

Configuring Isotope

Portal_nirmal.vm

Include the Isotope .js file in your Theme.

 

After create a theme you can create a portlet with the name of isotope-layout for writing your HTML. write initialization code in your theme main.js file.

Initializing isotope with Jquery:


Initialize with Vanilla JavaScript:

Initialize in HTML:

You can initialize Isotope directly in HTML, without writing any JavaScript or Jquery. You have to just add js-isotope to the class of the container element. For adding the options you can add data-isotope-options attribute in your element.

How to use Filtering,Sorting and Layout

Using Isotope you can hide and show item elements with the filter option. Which shows the only matched items according to the filter. Here you can see how we can apply the filters on:

Selectors(Like Class and id)

jQuery selectors(if jQuery is present)

// filter .ClassName items that are NOT .transition class

$grid.isotope({ filter: ‘.ClassName:not(.transition)’ });

With Functions

UI with Buttons

Sorting

In Sorting we are using two methods getSortData() and SortBy().

For more Information: Sorting

layout

In Layout all sizing and styling of items is handled by your own CSS so when we are developing the responsive layouts then we need to set item sizes with percentages in css and also we need to change the mode of layout with masonry and set the percentage-width columnWidth with element sizing. Setting up the percentPosition option true (percentPosition: true) reduce the adjustment transitions on responsive mode.

For more Information: Layout

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:Ā 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. Itā€™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
Angular-porlet

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.

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

In this article you can see how Angular makes browsers intelligentā€” 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. Itā€™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:-

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:

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.

How to configure AngularJS Plugin in Liferay

 

AngularJS IDE plugin is based on tern.java to manage powerful completion on HTML files (AngularsJS Expression, directive, modules) and Javascripts files.

Configure AngularJS Plugin in Liferay

AngularJS IDE Plugin help you to extend Liferay web development tool and enhance the capabilities of UI development in liferay:

  • HTML editor which supports AngularJS expression and directive.
  • Angular Explorer view which displays modules, controllers of your project in a tree structure.
  • Javascript editor which supports AngularJS features (modules, etc).

Follow this below steps to configure the angularjs plugin in liferay

  • Go to : Help > Click on Install New Software
  • Copy and paste this URL in Work with textbox ā€œAnularjs – http://oss.opensagres.fr/angularjs-eclipse/0.7.0/ā€
  • Anularjs – http://oss.opensagres.fr/angularjs-eclipse/0.7.0/

We need to select only those components who are not installed on you Liferay Developer Studio.

Click on checkbox ā€œHide items that already installedā€

Install Angular

Click on Next Button.

After installation of all the components you can convert your Project.

  • Right click on your project > Configure > Convert to AngularJS Project

AngularJS Eclipse is based on the javascript inference engine tern.js is written in JavaScript. To use it You must configure node.js. You can also do it this with Rhino but itā€™s too slow for that .To do that you can :

  • Now Go to Window > Prefrences > Select Tern:

when the native node is selected, in default folders installation, it explores node binary (ex : “C:\Program Files\nodejs\node.exe” for Windows) and if it doesn’t locate, it seeks in your node in your “PATH” environment. For that you have to set PATH enviroment in your system.

You can download node.js from this link. you must install the node.js according your OS Configuration :

Install nodeJS

Right Click on your Project properties and verify the angular plugin

Angular-module

Angular plugin will offer you to recover controllers,module, (custom) directives while writing a code. Here you can also see the list of other modules are available which we can select and enable as per the project requirement.

Set your Script path:

scrpt-path

Settings of AngularJS Directives Syntax

Angular is using several syntax of declaring directives like starting with ‘x-‘, ‘data-‘ and use ‘:’, ‘-‘, ‘_’ delimiters.

directives

Here ,we have finished to configure AngularJS IDE Plugin, now it’s time to write the code and start your first web application with Liferay.

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

Hereā€™s how you can define your color schemes in liferay-look-and-feel.xml:

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. Letā€™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:

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.