3.8. Portal Components

In this manual, a portal is a client block, which is designed to:

  • provide an alternative web-interface, which is usually intended for users outside of the organization;

  • provide an interface for integration with mobile applications and third-party systems.

A specific application may contain several portal modules intended for different purposes; for example, in an application, which automates business tasks, it can be a public web site for customers, an integration module for a mobile application for ordering a taxi, an integration module for a mobile application for drivers, etc.

The cuba application component includes the portal module, which is a template to create portals in projects. It provides basic functionality of the client block to work with Middleware. Besides, the universal REST API, included to the portal module as a dependency, is turned on by default.

Below is an overview of the main components provided by the platform in the portal module.

  • PortalAppContextLoader – the AppContext loader; must be registered in the listener element of the web.xml file.

  • PortalDispatcherServlet – the central servlet that distributes requests to Spring MVC controllers, for both the web interface and REST API. The set of Spring context configuration files is defined by the cuba.dispatcherSpringContextConfig application property. This servlet must be registered in web.xml and mapped to the root URL of the web application.

  • App – the object that contains information on the current HTTP request and the reference to Connection object. The App instance can be obtained in the application code by calling the App.getInstance() static method.

  • Connection – allows a user to log in/out of the Middleware.

  • PortalSession – the object of a user session that is specific for the portal. It is returned by the UserSessionSource infrastructure interface and by the PortalSessionProvider.getUserSession() static method.

    It has an additional isAuthenticated() method, which returns true if this session belongs to a non-anonymous user, i.e. a user explicitly registered with the login and password.

    When a user first accesses the portal, the SecurityContextHandlerInterceptor creates an anonymous session for him (or ties to an already existing one) by registering at Middleware with a user name specified in the cuba.portal.anonymousUserLogin application property. The registration is made by loginTrusted() method, so it is necessary to set the cuba.trustedClientPassword property in the portal block as well. Thus, any anonymous user of the portal can work with Middleware with cuba.portal.anonymousUserLogin user rights.

    If the portal contains user registration page with name and password SecurityContextHandlerInterceptor assigns the session of the explicitly registered user to the execution thread after Connection.login() is executed, and the work with Middleware is performed on this user’s behalf.

  • PortalLogoutHandler – handles the navigation to the logout page. It must be registered in the portal-security-spring.xml project file.