Liferay Friendly URL

Introduction

The normal generated portlet URLs containing a set of internal Liferay request parameters.
These long URLs of links or forms are mostly not readable and its not easy to share it somewhere else.

General Liferay portlet URL:

http://localhost:8080/web/guest/examples?p_p_id=example_WAR_ExamplePortlet&p_p_lifecycle=1&p_p_state=normal&p_p_mode=view&p_p_col_id=column-1&p_p_col_count=1&_example_WAR_ExamplePortlet_javax.portlet.action=new

Explanation of the Liferay request parameters:
p_p_id: The portlet ID (example_WAR_ExamplePortlet)
p_p_state: Liferay windows pages state - 1 (normal) 2 (maximize) 3 (minimize)
p_p_mode: Mode of the portlet look like - (view) (edit) (help)
p_p_lifecycle: This is life cycle of portlet - 0 (render) 1 (action) 2 (server)
p_p_col_id: The reference ID of the column in Liferay template
p_p_col_pos: Specifiy the column position if the the layout having more than one columns
p_p_col_count: Shows the no of columns in the current layout

Friendly URL Mapper configuration

Liferay provides a mechanism to shorten the generated URLs by using the Friendly URL Mapper feature.

How to configure the friendly URL Mapper in Liferay?

Configuration of URL routes in XML files

CREATE example-friendly-url-routes.xml

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE routes PUBLIC "-//Liferay//DTD Friendly URL Routes 6.2.2//EN"
"http://www.liferay.com/dtd/liferay-friendly-url-routes_6_0_0.dtd">
<routes>
	<route>
		<pattern>/action/{actionName}</pattern>
		<generated-parameter name="javax.portlet.action">{actionName}</generated-parameter>
		<ignored-parameter name="p_auth"/>
		<ignored-parameter name="p_p_id"/>
		<implicit-parameter name="p_p_lifecycle">1</implicit-parameter>
		<implicit-parameter name="p_p_state">normal</implicit-parameter>
		<implicit-parameter name="p_p_mode">view</implicit-parameter>
	</route>
</routes>

Explanation of the Liferay Friendly Mapper route parameters:
routes: Routes element which contains all route entries
route: Single route element entry
pattern: Pattern of the mapped friendly URL (visible in address bar)
generated-parameter: These parameters will be generated from parameters in the request URL
ignored-parameter: These parameters will be igored and not included in generated URLs
implicit-parameter: Used for static attributes which can be ignored by recognition
overridden-parameter: Parameter that should be set to a certain value when a URL is recognized

It is necessary to order the parameters as described above.
These files should located in the resources folder otherwise they will not be available on Apache Tomcat and cannot be initialized by Liferay.

Configuration of friendly URL Java class

MODIFY liferay-portlet.xml

<friendly-url-mapper-class>com.liferay.portal.kernel.portlet.DefaultFriendlyURLMapper</friendly-url-mapper-class>
<friendly-url-mapping>example</friendly-url-mapping>
<friendly-url-routes>com/.../example-friendly-url-routes.xml</friendly-url-routes>

In the next step we need one java implementation class to generate the Liferay friendly URLs.

Liferay provides the DefaultFriendlyURLMapper class to create the URLs based on our rules.

The Liferay Friendly URL Mapper configuration is placed after <icon/> and before <instanceable> tag.

Friendly URL Mapper outcome

Liferay will generate the following friendly URL

http://localhost:8080/web/guest/examples/-/example/action/new

1. The liferay framework will add "-" (dash)
2. Friendly URL mapper name which is configured in <friendly-url-mapping> (liferay-portlet.xml) element
3. Pattern name with generated parameters which is same as in <pattern> (example-friendly-url-routes.xml) defined.

Additional

Friendly URL Mapper functionality is not working if the portletURL API is used to generate the Liferay URL in local Javascript.
It is helpful to generate <portlet:renderURL> placeholder and replace them by using dummy values.