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Use

Portal applications are defined in a portal application project within the SAP NetWeaver Developer Studio. The project contains a deployment descriptor, all Java classes, Web resources and other files required to run the application.

The name of the project becomes the name of the application as it runs in the portal, and is also used for the name of application WAR file, and the name of the deployable EAR file in which the WAR is packaged.

The fully qualified name of any component or service defined in the portal application is the name of the project, followed by a period ( . ) and then the name of the component or service.

The files contained in a portal application project are divided into the following types:

  • Web resources

    All files in a portal application can be accessed directly via an HTTP request, such as:

    • HTML

    • Images

    • Stylesheets (.css)

    Web resource files can be located anywhere outside the top-level PORTAL-INF and META-INF folders.

    You can create links to these files directly. For more information, see Creating URLs to Web Resources .

  • Java Classes and Deployment Descriptor

    Java classes that implement the component and services defined in the PAR file, plus the deployment descriptor ( portalapp.xml ). The deployment descriptor specifies the components and services contained in the portal application, and defines the configuration for the application, components and services. For more information the deployment descriptor, see Deployment Descriptor (portalapp.xml) .

    The project's Java classes and deployment descriptor are located in the top-level PORTALINF folder.

    In the PORTAL-INF folder, the following folders have special purposes:

    Folder

    Description

    lib

    Contains all application library files (JAR) that can be referenced by other portal applications.

    classes

    Contains all class files and other resources (such as resource bundles) that can be referenced by other portal applications.

    private/lib

    Contains all application library files (JAR) that are used exclusively by the application.

    private/classes

    Contains all class files and other resources (such as resource bundles) that are used exclusively by the application.

    • Manifest

      A project can also include a manifest file ( MANIFEST.MF in the top-level META-INF folder), which provides version information. The folder and file are not required, but are recommended for tracking versions of your application.

    The following diagram provides the file structure of a portal application project file: