Economists Online Portlet
=========================

Fred Vos and Sjoerd Schunselaar, 2009-08-31

Introduction
++++++++++++
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portlet for an introduction to portlets.

As you see on the Wikipedia page, a portlet is a small info-box that runs within a bigger website.
Such a website is often called a 'Portal' or 'Web Portal'.
The term 'Portal', however, has a much broader use.
It is used for websites too, like the Economists Online Portal.
Here we use the term 'Portlet Container' for websites that run portlets.

Portlets and Portlet Containers must follow certain standards.
Two standards are available: JSR-168 (Java Portlet API 1.0) and JSR-286 (Java Portlet API 2.0).
Version 1.0 (JSR-168) is widely adoped.
Apache Pluto is the reference application for both standards.
If a portlet works in Pluto, it should work in any Portlet Container that follows the same standard.

The Portlet
+++++++++++
One of the things that had to be built for NEEO was a portlet.
There was no specification for the portlet.
We built a version 1.0 portlet with a simple goal:
show a list with the number of harvested publications from the NEEO partners and RePEc.

The following screenshot shows the portlet running within a Pluto Portlet Container:

.. image:: ../../resources/images/portlet-screenshot.jpg
   :align: left
   :height: 10.37cm
   :width: 14cm

There's no URL where we can demonstrate the portlet,
but we can make it available if anyone is interested in using it.
Furthermore, the source code for the portlet will become available as open source code
together with the code for the EO portal.