Focus a channel

Channel self-focusing

You can focus the channel via a request parameter: uP_root=me

When you want to "unfocus", use uP_root=root

Examples:

<a href="{$baseActionURL}?uP_root=me">Focus me</a>

<form name="Focus me" action="{$baseActionURL}">
  <input type="hidden" name="uP_root" value="root"/> 
   ... 
</form>

Thanks to Ken Weiner for providing this information on the JASIG-PORTAL list.

External links

Motivation

You might want to have links outside your portal link into your uPortal, through login, to a channel in focus mode.
This is how Yale University delivers its Network Registration channel.

Examples

YaleInfo daily business cartoon channel
*YaleInfo Network Registration – you won't be able to get through CAS, but this link demonstrates using this feature with CAS.

NOTE in order to successfully validate your service ticket, you should either use YaleCasFilteredContext or you would have to modify the portal authentication framework to pass in the request URI to ensure that additional parameters are passed through to CAS as part of the service URL. ~jayshao

Documentation

YaleInfo documentation on uPortal Login Focus

Implementation

This is accomplished by a modification to LoginServlet to collect the parameters:

 public void doGet (HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response) 
      throws ServletException, IOException {
  	if (log.isTraceEnabled()){
  		log.trace("entering doGet(" + request + "...)");
  	}
  	
  	/* Grab the target functional name, if any, off the login request.
  	 * Really we should lookup the key in a properties file.
  	 * If this parameter is set, we will pass it along after authentication.
  	 */
  	String targetFname = request.getParameter("uP_fname");
  	String targetArgs = request.getParameter("uP_args");

And then some code to put these parameters on the redirect to the uPortal session management servlet.

  // Check to see if the person has been authenticated
    if (person != null && person.getSecurityContext().isAuthenticated()) {
    	String redirectTarget = null;

			if (targetFname == null){
				redirectTarget = request.getContextPath() + "/" + redirectString;
			} else {
				redirectTarget = request.getContextPath() + "/" +
				"tag.idempotent." +  redirectString + "?uP_fname=" + targetFname;
				if (targetArgs != null) {
				redirectTarget = redirectTarget + "&uP_args=" + targetArgs;
				}
			} 
    	
			if (log.isTraceEnabled()){
				log.trace("person [" + person + "] is authenticated.  " +
                    "Redirecting to PortalSessionManager servlet at [" 
                        + redirectString + "] with a complete redirect target " +
                        "of [" + redirectTarget + "]");
			}
    	
      response.sendRedirect(redirectTarget);
    }