Portal: Configuring Profiles

This document gives an overview over configuring profiles.

The portal engine uses a component for managing the profile of the current user. There are different implementations already available. The static profile manager gives ever user the same profile whereas the default profile manager chooses the profile of the user based on the role and the user. In this chapter we describe this mechanism and how it can be configured.

The portal engine uses the authentication framework to authenticate a user. This is the default configuration that is also used in the provided sample. However, the portal is not tied to that framework so whenever the need arises you can implement your own authentication mechanism and use it in the portal.

When the authentication framework is used for authenticating the user, the profile is selected (or can be selected) on the role the user is in. Therefore the authentication framework has to deliver the role name of the user in the authentication XML (for more information about the authentication, read the authentication framework documentation.)

The current sample of the portal returns already a role for the registered users (the two roles guest and admin are used).

When a user logs into the portal, the profile for this user is loaded and then stored in the session. As explained in the chapters about coplets, the profile of a user consists of several parts: the coplet base data (coplet types), the coplet data (classes), the coplet instance datas (instances) and the layout (ordering of the coplets).

In the following we describe the default setting of the portal. All profiles are stored as XML files in a distinct directory. However, if you want to store your profiles in a different location, you can configure this location or you can also store the profiles in a database or any other persistence layer.

Coplet Types

Each part is described in a different XML configuration file. The coplet base data (coplet types) is a global setting that is not user/role dependent. All other parts can differ based on the current user and his role.

The default location for this profile is profiles/copletbasedata/portal.xml.

Available Coplets

The coplet data (=classes) defines the set of available coplets for the current user. The user can choose any of these coplets in his view. If a user has selected a coplet, an instance of this coplet is created.

The list of available/allowed coplets is defined in three steps.

1. First the global list with coplets for all users is read.
2. Then a list with coplets for the current role is read and added to the global list. This list is optional.
3. Finally, a list with coplets for the current user is added to the list. This list is also optional.

By default all profiles for the coplet data are stored in the directory profiles/copletdata. The global profile has the filename portal.xml. The file name for the different role profiles is portal-role-NAME_OF_ROLE.xml. And the name of the profile for the user is portal-user-USER_NAME.xml.

In most cases it's sufficient to add the coplets that are available to all users in the global list. In addition you will define some role based profiles for the different roles where you add coplets that are only available for this role, like some administration coplets that are only meant for administrators.

It is currently not possible to disable a coplet in a role or user profile that has been enabled in the global (or role profile). The reverse isn't possible as well (disabling in global, enabling in role)!

The Portal View

The portal view for a user consists of two parts: the select coplets (= the coplet instances) and the layout. The layout defines the ordering and the arrangement of the coplets.

Usually each user has his own portal view. The layout for the user is defined in profiles/layout/portal-user-USER_NAME.xml and the instances are defined in profiles/copletinstancedata/portal-user-USER_NAME.xml.

However, in some cases each user of a distinct role has the same portal view, so you can define role based portal views. The two configuration files are in the profiles/layout and in the profiles/copletinstancedata directory and have the name portal-role-NAME_OF_ROLE.xml.

This role based portal view is also used when a user logs into the portal for the first time and hasn't "created" his own portal view yet.

In addition you can define a global setting for the portal view with the two configuration files in the two above mentioned directories. Give them both the name portal.xml. This portal view is used whenever the user doesn't have an own portal view and no role based view exists.