Introduction #

World of Liferay portlets (Friends Activity and Recent Activity) give you a feed of activities information about your friends and others. This article explains how the Blogs portlet can generate a feed for these portlets.

Method #

• Define the Activity Interpreter class in liferay-portlet.xml. In this case it's BlogsActivityInterpreter.java.

<portlet>
	<portlet-name>33</portlet-name>
	<icon>/html/icons/blogs.png</icon>
	<struts-path>blogs</struts-path>
		...
	<social-activity-interpreter-class>com.liferay.portlet.blogs.social.BlogsActivityInterpreter
	</social-activity-interpreter-class>
		...
</portlet>

• Define an Activity Keys class, which tells the type of activity. In the case of Blogs portlet it's BlogsActivityKeys.java. There are two types of keys that are defined:

public static final int ADD_COMMENT = 1;
public static final int ADD_ENTRY = 2;

• Save the data in the SocailActivity table which you want to display as feed. In the case of the Blogs portlet there are 3 places:
• Add new Blog Entry
  

socialActivityLocalService.addActivity(userId, groupId, BlogsEntry.class.getName(), entryId, BlogsActivityKeys.ADD_ENTRY, StringPool.BLANK, 0); }}}

• Update an existing Blog Entry
  

socialActivityLocalService.addActivity(userId, entry.getGroupId(), BlogsEntry.class.getName(), entryId, BlogsActivityKeys.ADD_ENTRY, StringPool.BLANK, 0); }}}

• Delete a Blog Entry
  

socialActivityLocalService.deleteActivities( BlogsEntry.class.getName(), entry.getEntryId()); }}}

• Implement interpreting logic in Interpreter Class. In case of blog portlet it’s BlogsActivityInterpreter.java. You need to implement doInterpret() Method defined in base class:

protected SocialActivityFeedEntry doInterpret(
	SocialActivity activity, ThemeDisplay themeDisplay)
	throws Exception {
		...
}

There are three variables which decide the Feed Entry.

1. Link – Anchor link which will take you to original Entry (If you want to do that)
2. Title – Title of the Feed. [Ex: UserX added a new blog entry, UserX added a new event etc.]
3. Body – Body of the feed entry

Let's see how it's done in Blog portlet:

1. Link - It's the finder link for Blog Entry (/c/blogs/find_entry?entryId=100)
2. Title - (User added a new blog entry ). Text is defined in language.properties, Ex: "activity-blogs-add-entry". You can change the text .
3. Body – It's the title (embedded with link) and preview of the entry.