Hey David --
Couldn't agree more and I NEVER put this stuff in an EXT pluging -- part of the reason I am struggling with it
. Let me give you the whole background.
I have a requirement where multiple domain names map to the same company. Right now the approach in place requirs some hook magic, but worse, removing a constraint on the VirtualHost table so that we can have two hostnames pointing to the same companyId. We've tried a few other things including vanity urls and an attempt to do search and replace on the response stream -- searching for the "internal" name and replacing with the appropriate external name (based on locale). Sadly, with OWASP and encoding -- we're unable to get all the urls.
This lead me down the path to determine that the only way to manage this is to affect the URLs created by the portal. In the PortalImpl class the getPortalURL seems to be the nexus of the universe. I did a poc using the LocaleUtil.getMostReleveantLocale() to grab the locale from the LocaleThreadLocal -- and found that I consistently get the correct value. I also added the logic to replace the serverName passed into that method (which appears to always be the hostname from the VirtualHost table) with the domain we need. Everything looks good.
The next step now is to introduce what I am calling VirtualHost aliases. So, in tha getPortalURL method I plan to check for a configuration as to whether or not virtual host aliases are enabled. If they are, then I want to use a VirtualHostAliasLocalServiceUtil class to retieve the alias to be used based on the companyId, hostname (serverName) and locale. If one is found, then replace the serverName value with the alias.
I plan on then adding a control panel portlet to the Configuration section so that aliases can be managed in there.
So -- I tried to provide the VirtualHostAlias service in an external portlet, but then found that I could not build the PortalImpl class because it was missing references. I added the *-service.jar to the TOMCAT/lib/ext as well as my project definition, but no joy. Truth be told, if I get this all working I plan to submit it to Liferay as a pull request as I think that this is a good improvement and might help solve some people complaints about the full urls values that Liferay returns (gives them an additional level of control).
So -- with that said, I just tried an ant clean first followed by my other command, but I am still getting the --
[java] java.lang.RuntimeException: Column name not found
[java] at com.liferay.portal.tools.servicebuilder.Entity.getColumn(Entity.java:63)
I'll keep digging, but if you have any other thoughts, happy to listen.
Couldn't agree more and I NEVER put this stuff in an EXT pluging -- part of the reason I am struggling with it
. Let me give you the whole background.I have a requirement where multiple domain names map to the same company. Right now the approach in place requirs some hook magic, but worse, removing a constraint on the VirtualHost table so that we can have two hostnames pointing to the same companyId. We've tried a few other things including vanity urls and an attempt to do search and replace on the response stream -- searching for the "internal" name and replacing with the appropriate external name (based on locale). Sadly, with OWASP and encoding -- we're unable to get all the urls.
This lead me down the path to determine that the only way to manage this is to affect the URLs created by the portal. In the PortalImpl class the getPortalURL seems to be the nexus of the universe. I did a poc using the LocaleUtil.getMostReleveantLocale() to grab the locale from the LocaleThreadLocal -- and found that I consistently get the correct value. I also added the logic to replace the serverName passed into that method (which appears to always be the hostname from the VirtualHost table) with the domain we need. Everything looks good.
The next step now is to introduce what I am calling VirtualHost aliases. So, in tha getPortalURL method I plan to check for a configuration as to whether or not virtual host aliases are enabled. If they are, then I want to use a VirtualHostAliasLocalServiceUtil class to retieve the alias to be used based on the companyId, hostname (serverName) and locale. If one is found, then replace the serverName value with the alias.
I plan on then adding a control panel portlet to the Configuration section so that aliases can be managed in there.
So -- I tried to provide the VirtualHostAlias service in an external portlet, but then found that I could not build the PortalImpl class because it was missing references. I added the *-service.jar to the TOMCAT/lib/ext as well as my project definition, but no joy. Truth be told, if I get this all working I plan to submit it to Liferay as a pull request as I think that this is a good improvement and might help solve some people complaints about the full urls values that Liferay returns (gives them an additional level of control).
So -- with that said, I just tried an ant clean first followed by my other command, but I am still getting the --
[java] java.lang.RuntimeException: Column name not found
[java] at com.liferay.portal.tools.servicebuilder.Entity.getColumn(Entity.java:63)
I'll keep digging, but if you have any other thoughts, happy to listen.
Pfft.. I'm such a boner. I was making the correct changes to my service.xml -- but I was changing the wrong file lol. Once I changed the correct file it worked. Thanks guys
Hey David,
In our case it's a language thing. The client wants distinct urls per language. So if I have french.external.com and english.external.com, then, as you say, I want links in the resulting response body to be set accordingly. Right now there is no way to do that, even with the httpd. We tried that with our F5 but no dice. To the alias thing that we're doing provides you the ability to say both french.external.com and english.external.com ---> internal.com, with the accept-language in the request header set accordingly (I know that if you are coming in from french.external.com, you should have that value set to fr). This works for masking the domains and ensuring the correct language is in place. However, when the getPortalURL method is called, it generates all the links with internal.com. Search and replace on the response stream would have been nice -- but it's too difficult to manage for things like --
.. which you will find in the bottom of this page. Removing the url encoding seemed like a bad idea. So our logic is to use the locale to swap out the language.
Now with all that said, my next question on this would be -- if I want to add finder methods to my EXT, where should I place the custom-sql folder? in the ext-eb/docroot/WEB-INF? I also don't see where the SQL file generated with the logic to build the tables on deploy has been placed.. do you know where it is hiding?
In our case it's a language thing. The client wants distinct urls per language. So if I have french.external.com and english.external.com, then, as you say, I want links in the resulting response body to be set accordingly. Right now there is no way to do that, even with the httpd. We tried that with our F5 but no dice. To the alias thing that we're doing provides you the ability to say both french.external.com and english.external.com ---> internal.com, with the accept-language in the request header set accordingly (I know that if you are coming in from french.external.com, you should have that value set to fr). This works for masking the domains and ensuring the correct language is in place. However, when the getPortalURL method is called, it generates all the links with internal.com. Search and replace on the response stream would have been nice -- but it's too difficult to manage for things like --
Liferay.currentURL="\x2fcommunity\x2fforums\x3fp_p_id\x3d19\x26p_p_lifecycle\x3d0\x26p_p_state\x3dnormal\x26p_p_mode\x3dview\x26p_p_col_id\x3dcolumn-1\x26p_p_col_count\x3d1\x26_19_struts_action\x3d\x252Fmessage_boards\x252Fedit_message\x26_19_redirect\x3dhttps\x253A\x252F\x252Fwww\x2eliferay\x2ecom\x252Fcommunity\x252Fforums\x252F-\x252Fmessage_boards\x252Fmessage\x252F52157276\x26_19_mbCategoryId\x3d239390\x26_19_threadId\x3d5464305\x26_19_parentMessageId\x3d52156559";Liferay.currentURLEncoded="%2Fcommunity%2Fforums%3Fp_p_id%3D19%26p_p_lifecycle%3D0%26p_p_state%3Dnormal%26p_p_mode%3Dview%26p_p_col_id%3Dcolumn-1%26p_p_col_count%3D1%26_19_struts_action%3D%252Fmessage_boards%252Fedit_message%26_19_redirect%3Dhttps%253A%252F%252Fwww.liferay.com%252Fcommunity%252Fforums%252F-
.. which you will find in the bottom of this page. Removing the url encoding seemed like a bad idea
. So our logic is to use the locale to swap out the language. Now with all that said, my next question on this would be -- if I want to add finder methods to my EXT, where should I place the custom-sql folder? in the ext-eb/docroot/WEB-INF? I also don't see where the SQL file generated with the logic to build the tables on deploy has been placed.. do you know where it is hiding?
Hey David,
I followed the same convention that Liferay does in their source. My namespace is com.liferay.portlet.virtualhostsalias which results in code generated under --
[indent]ext-impl/com.liferay.portlet.virtualhostalias[/indent]
and
[indent]ext-service/com.liferay.portlet.virtualhostalias.service[/indent]
.. I found the sprint generated files in teh META-INF folder of the ext-impl project, but this is most unorthodox when compared to a service builder portlet plugin. I need a map!
I followed the same convention that Liferay does in their source. My namespace is com.liferay.portlet.virtualhostsalias which results in code generated under --
[indent]ext-impl/com.liferay.portlet.virtualhostalias[/indent]
and
[indent]ext-service/com.liferay.portlet.virtualhostalias.service[/indent]
.. I found the sprint generated files in teh META-INF folder of the ext-impl project, but this is most unorthodox when compared to a service builder portlet plugin
. I need a map!
