Implementing client-side interportlet communication with Dojo and WebSphere Portal

Many portal developers have used WebSphere Portal to create cooperative portlets that share events and data to enhance the user experience. For example, a selection submitted in one portlet could cause updated information to display in multiple related portlets, helping the portlets to stay synchronized in their presentation. This functionality is implemented on the server and relies on the portlets submitting action requests to the server so that it can perform the data transfers before the page is refreshed.

This approach starts to break down as you add Ajax functionality to portlets because you dynamically update the data displayed by a portlet without submitting an action request or refreshing the page. This article shows how to use the Dojo JavaScript toolkit to share data and events between portlets in the browser, providing cooperative support to dynamically updated portlets.