practical liferay Java -based Portal Applications development apress phần 9 ppsx

270 Chapter 10 ■  PUBLISHING DYNAMIC CONTENT

This screen displays a list of existing templates at the bottom. This list is currently blank

because you haven’t yet defined any templates. We’ll remedy that now.

Adding a Template

To create a new template, follow the steps listed here:

1. Click the Add Template button. You will see the screen shown in Figure 10-12.

Figure 10-12. Creating a new template

2. Do the following things on the displayed screen:

a. Autogenerate ID: Mark this check box. The application will now autogenerate the ID

for the new template.

b. Name: Enter Announcement Template.

c. Description: Enter This is a page template for the announcement type of journal

article.

Chapter 10 ■  PUBLISHING DYNAMIC CONTENT 271

d. Cacheable: Leave this box checked (the default).

e. Structure: Click the appropriate button to select or remove the earlier selected

structures.

f. Language Type: You get three choices here:

i. VM: Velocity is a powerful Java-based template engine. It renders data from

plain Java objects to various formats.

ii. XSL: Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL) is a language for expressing style

sheets. Like CSS, it contains information on how to render an XML document.

iii. CSS: Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a widely accepted standard for creating

style sheets to define how web-page information will be rendered.

g. Script: Specify the file that defines the template structure. Because you can create

the template structure in VM, XSL, or CSS, you should select the appropriate file

based on the language selection in the Language Type field. To locate the file on the

system, use the Browse button. Alternatively, you can create a new file on the fly

using the Launch Editor button.

nNote As mentioned earlier, a template defines the formatting instructions for each field defined in the

structure. When the user views the article, these formatting instructions will be applied to the various fields

defined in the structure and the formatted output will be rendered in the user’s browser. You can specify

such formatting instructions in VM, XSL, or CSS, but describing the formatting instructions is beyond the

scope of this book.

h. Format Script: Mark this check box if you want to format your script. You must save

the document by clicking the Save and Continue button or the Save button to see

the effects of this action. The opportunity to format the script is especially useful if

you created the script in an external editor and did not indent it properly.

i. Small Image URL: Specify the URL of the image to be used for identifying the

template.

j. Small Image: Alternatively, you can specify an image from the local disk. To locate

the image, use the Browse button.

k. Use Small Image: If you have populated the Small Image field, check this box.

l. Permissions: Use this section to set the various permissions for Regular and Com￾munity roles. For now, leave these at their default values.

3. Click the Save button to save your edits.

272 Chapter 10 ■  PUBLISHING DYNAMIC CONTENT

Viewing and Searching Templates

After you have created a template and saved it, it will appear in the list of templates on the

Templates screen in the main application view (see Figure 10-13).

Figure 10-13. View of predefined templates

As in the case of structures, the view screen has a search facility that lets you narrow down

the list of templates displayed. You can enter the search string in the Search edit box and click

the Search Templates button to locate the templates matching the search criterion.

Performing Actions on Templates

The actions you can perform on templates are similar to the actions you can perform on

structures:

• Edit: This allows you to edit the selected template. Selecting this action opens the tem￾plate in the editor, giving you the opportunity to edit any of the fields.

• Permissions: This action allows you to set user permissions on the selected template for

the Regular and Community roles.

• Copy: This option allows you to make a copy of the selected template under a new ID.

• Add Article: This action allows you to add a new article based on the current template.

I’ll discuss adding articles in the section “Creating Journal Articles.”

• View Articles: This option displays all the existing articles based on the currently

selected template.