Re: [Springframework-developer] Portlet support (again)

[Rainer S. <Rai...@ab...>]

Aloha!

I sent a patch, but meanwhile I've done more.
I've attached a zip file containing my changed and added files to 
confluence:
http://opensource.atlassian.com/confluence/spring/display/JSR168/Home?showComments=true#comments
Below is a copy of the comment I posted there.

Cheers,
Rainer


This zip contains some (many) changes to the CVS code.
Mainly the form handling code is affected, trying to build a form 
controller hierarchy similiar to the servlet tree.
A new controller type is ActionFormController for forms requiring 
processing in the action phase, e.g. to call 
ActionResponse.sendRedirect(String), 
ActionResponse.setPortletMode(PortletMode), or link 
ActionResponse.setWindowState(WindowState).
A controller extending this is RedirectFormController.

Another new class is ParameterControllerMapping to map controllers by a 
given request parameter, and ParameterMappingInterceptor to intercept 
those parameters in ActionRequests and forward it to the according 
RenderRequest.

The code works for me but needs some more testing and documentation.

Generally it might be necessary to change some method signatures in base 
classes from using ActionRequest/Response or RenderRequest/Response to 
use the more general PortletRequest/Response. Then implementing 
controllers have more freedom to choose wether the processing will take 
place mainly in the render phase (as proposed in the original code) or 
in the action phase (as implementd by ActionFormController). After 
implementing a few portlets I can imagine the need for portlets doing 
more work in the action phase and forward the result to the render phase 
as parameter or even in the portlet session.
In addition the next version of the portlet specification might relax 
the communication constraints between action and render phases (e.g. by 
allowing to set RenderReuqest attributes).  The proposed changes will 
make it easier for implementing controllers to implement those extensions.