Angular 4 Portlet in Liferay DXP/7

Why do we need to integrate angular with portlet?

Single Page Application (SPA) is an application that fits on a single web page with dynamic actions without refreshing the page. To build SPA we can use Angular - an open source SPA framework. To create Single Page Application using Angular(formerly known as AngularJS) in liferay portlet, it is necessary to integrate angular with the portlet.

Prerequisite:

Before visiting this blog, please make sure you must have a basic idea of angular and how to create mvc portlet .

Environment requirements:

• Liferay IDE v3.0+
• Liferay Portal 7.0.2 CE GA3 / Liferay DXP
• JDK 8
• Blade CLI
• Gradle 3.0
• node version : 4.7.0+
• npm version :  5.5.1+

Creating MVC-Portlet Module:

1. Create an MVC portlet by using Liferay IDE or Blade CLI and Edit following generated files.
   • bnd.bnd
     • Add these 2 lines at the end of file:
       • -includeresource: package.json
       • -plugin.npm: com.liferay.ant.bnd.npm.NpmAnalyzerPlugin
   • build.gradle
     • Add buildscript and plugin before dependencies:
     • Add Gradle build tasks:- npmInstall, compileTypeScript,  copyAngularModules as described below.
   • view.jsp
     • Add system scripts from node modules and configure environment  variable according to requirements.
     • Change angular-portlet-1.0.0 with <YOUR-PORTLET-NAME>-1.0.0
     • Change selector name (e.g.  angular-app)  according to index.html
2. Create following angular resources:
   • package.json inside( /modules/angular-portlet/ ) : Used to manage locally installed npm packages.You can add or remove packages according to your requirements.
   • tsconfig.json inside( /modules/angular-portlet/ ) : It is a typescript configuration file to guide the compiler as it generates javascript files.
   • index.html, main.ts, polyfills.ts inside(/modules/angular-portlet/src/main/resources/META-INF/resources/) :
     • index.html : Main layout file
     • main.ts : It is the entry point of application, compiles the application with just-in-time and bootstraps the application’s root module.
     • polyfills.ts : Many browsers lack native support for some features in the latest HTML standards, features that Angular requires. "Polyfills" can emulate the missing features.
     • Create new folder : e.g.  app  (/modules/angular-portlet/src/main/resources/META-INF/resources): Create files app.component.ts, app.module.ts inside this folder
       • app.component.ts : The main component
       • app.module.ts : An Angular module class describes how the application parts fit together.
3. Add this file to configure angular with liferay:
   • systemjs.config.js inside( /modules/angular-portlet/src/main/resources/META-INF/resources/ ) :It is used to tell SystemJS where to look when we import a module.

                           Now, project structure will look like :

     
4. Update angular resources created in step 2 to bootstrap angular in portlet:
   • package.json : Add dependencies and devDependencies according to your project need and also change angular version to 5.0.0
   • tsconfig.json : Add include and exclude directory paths to bundle required files.
   • index.html : html tag used to bootstrap App must match component selector.
   • main.ts :
     • Change bootstrapModule method like
     • If you change selector name in app.component.ts, change angular-app with that name in main.ts as well.
   • systemjs.config.js : Change web context path in this file according to your portlet name.
   • polyfills.ts : Update polyfills.ts file with the following code

Deployment:

Run below blade commands to deploy angular portlet.

• To build project run command: blade gw build

• To create jar file for portlet run command: blade gw deploy

After deployment add portlet and it will look like :

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