# Working with WSRP-compliant Portlets

For more detailed infomation on how WSRP works with WebLogic Portal, please refer to Using WSRP with WebLogic Portal.

WSRP—Web Service for Remote Portlets—is a web services standard that allows you to “plug-n-play” visual, user-facing web services with portals or other intermediary web applications. It allows you to create portlets that can either provide content to other portlets or consume content from other sources, even those far removed from your enterprise.

## Types of WSRP Portlets

WSRP-compliant portlets are either hosted on a producer or ceated on a consumer.

### Producers

Producers provide such services as self-description, mark up, registration, and portlet management. Producers can optionally manage the registration of consumers and require them to pre-register prior to interacting with portlets. A registration establishes a relationship between Consumers and Producers.

Producer portlets are further classified into either simple or complex producers.

- A complex producer requires registration, does support URL rewriting in the consumer, and does support a management interface. By default, all portlets created with WebLogic Workshop 8.1 SP3 are complex producers. You can convert a complex producer to a simple producer to make its pageflows and Struts applications available as "portlets" to remote portals.
- A simple producer is a non-portal web application that contains Java page flows and Struts applications. It does not depend upon any portal features (for example, customization). It doesn't require registration, doesn't support URL rewriting in the consumer, and does not support a management interface. A simple producer is often advantageous because it easier to manage and you don't need to have the complete portal installed to run it. You will most commonly see simple producers used as departmental applications.

Since all WLW-created portlets are, by default, hosted on producers, in this documentation, they will be referred to simply as portlets.

### Consumers

Consumers collect binformation from producers and surface it in other portals. Consumers route requests from users to the appropriate producer, which, in turn processes the request and sends results back to the consumer. The Consumer aggregates the results coming from various producers and send the final result back to the user. In their role as proxies for producers, consumers proxy for end users, consumers provide the necessary separation of the large amount of traffic traffic flowing between them and the producers. They also ensure that all interactions are kept private to that specific user during the session.

In this documentation, portlets created on a consumer are referred to as "remote portlets."

NOTE: Unless their producer has been disabled, remote portlets are all hosted on producers.

## Creating and Maintaining WSRP Portlets

The following topics will show you how to use WebLogic Workshop to build and maintain WSRP-compliant remote portlets and how to modify portlets hosted on WSRP-compliant producers:

Creating a Remote Portlet

This topic walks you through the steps necessary to create a remote portlet. It also shows you how to add the portlet to a portal and then view that portal on your desktop.

Modifying a Remote Portlet

This topic describes how to add states and modes to a remote portlet,

Customizing a Remote Portlet

This topic tells you where to find complete information about and procedures for changing the look-and-feel of a remote portlet.

Disabling A Producer

This topic describes how to modify the producer configuration file so that producer application cannot be consumed by a remote portlet.

Making a Producer from a Non-Portal Web Application

This topic shows you how to turn a non-portal web application into a producer. This process is helpful when you want to make Java Page Flow or Struts applications available as remote producers.

Converting a Project Created in WebLogic Workshop 8.1 SP2 to an SP3 Project

This topic shows you how to import a project created in an earlier version of WebLogic Workshop into this version as a producer project.

## Related Topics

Creating a Portal Application and Portal Web Project

Building Portlets

Customizing Portlet