Accessing portal content with custom URLs
Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs) play a central role in enabling portal users to navigate among different pieces of content. This part in the series on Leveraging the WebSphere Portal programming model shows how to use and expand the capabilities of the portal URI resolution framework that was introduced in WebSphere Portal V6.0.1.This framework lets you define custom identifiers for any sort of content that is accessible through your portal. The identifiers take the form of a URI (Uniform Resource Identifier, RFC2396); that is, they start with a URI scheme that describes their purpose.
For example, you could define an article: URI format for articles in a document store that are accessible through your portal. You can then address the identified content by plugging resolvers into the portal to display portal pages in a specific configuration that you define with these URIs.
This article illustrates the URI resolution framework capabilities using an example that shows a custom URI mapping service. This service lets you address portal pages and control the state and content of portlets on pages with your own mapping definitions. This example shows you how to extend the power and flexibility of the built-in URL mapping feature that comes with WebSphere Portal.