Runtime control of your Liferay theme

Ray Augé
Ray Augé
Less Than a Minute Read

Sometimes you want some ability to tweak your Liferay theme at runtime...

Note: Don't do this when you are packaging a theme for public consumption.

It's very easy to add some "on-line" editability/tweakability to your themes, because we all know that we never get it just right the first time... and finding a bug inevitably happens the moment it goes live and/or you are presenting it to the CEO, and/or the moment you don't have access to the source to do another build...

The solution, for convenience or as a safety net, is simple.

- Create a Journal Template of type CSS, not associated with any Structure. Take note of the URL of the template.

- In the theme file "portal_normal.vm", find the section in the head:

[snip]
<head>
    <title>$company_name - $the_title</title>

    $theme.include($top_head_include)

    #css ($css_main_file)
    #js ($js_main_file)

    ...
[/snip]

Now, using the convenient VM macros available, include a reference to the URL you noted above.

    #css ($css_main_file)
    #css ("http://...")

It's better to include the reference after the portal's own, because otherwise you can't overrride it's definitions.

That's it!

Now you can access that template and tweak the theme whenever (and wherever) you are... everyone is happy... of course eventually you can migrate permanent changes to a next iteration of the theme.

 

Hope that helps!

Page Comments
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David Truong
17 Years Ago
Haha nice hack!
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Ray Augé David Truong
17 Years Ago
Thanks!
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Michael Poznecki Ray Augé
16 Years Ago
Nice, but how to I change the theme at runtime based on some user imput? For example, after my user logs in I give them a screen that offers a dropdown choice. If they choose "A", I want to give them theme_A, if they choose "B" I want to give them theme_B, etc...

Thanks,
Michael
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Ray Augé Michael Poznecki
16 Years Ago
You'll have to do more than a small change like this in the theme. You'll need some persistence (could use expandos) and a ServicePreAction which sets the themeId, etc...

Take a look at com.liferay.portal.events.RandomLookAndFeelAction for inspiration for setting the theme programatically.

To store the themeId, you could simply use the users's ExpandoBridge.

user.getExandoBridge().setAttribute("theme-id", myThemeId);

Of course, you first have to create the attribute from the UI or by calling:

user.getExandoBridge().addAttribute("theme-id", ExpandoColumnConstants.STRING);
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