HTML Site Inside Java Portlets

Question

I'm a complete noob when it comes to portlet development. I have a task which is to take a fairly small static html site and incorporate it into a portal/portlet environment.

My first thought is to develop one portlet that contains the entire html site within it.

Is this just a terrible idea?

If not, then I know I could make a simple portlet with an iframe to pull in the html for the site, but is there some other way to make a portlet that is a full functional little website?

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

That's a pretty vague question, but I don't see why ou can't do what you're trying to do.

The Portlet API is pretty unpleasant, though, and makes the servlet API look fluffy and joyous. I suggest using Spring's Portlet MVC support to make it a bit less painful.

Answer 2

I dont think that you can and want "put" a whole website into a portlet because of the limitations of the api. Even if the website is servlet based that seems not to be a good idea.

From a user perspective you should perhaps focus on your widget idea. Think about a smaller subset that encapsules the functionality of the website that should be embedded or write an aggregator for the information of the site.

Think about why the website should be integrated and which information of the site are the most important ones. Perhaps there are any other information exchange interfaces like rss or atom feeds that you can use.

Another solution would be to use an existing cms-like portlet that can be "filled" with content. Here are some examples: http://www.jboss.org/portletswap/portlets%5Fcollab.html