Updating Javascript in SAP Portal

Quick reminder to those of you who've followed my posts on Google Analytics.

Be sure that if you're updating a Javascript file that you take the time to update the version of the file. SAP Portal does this using a query string like construct after the javascript file for its OOTB components.

You can do a similar construct for your files by simply embedding a version into the file name. Following the previous GA example, you can simply update the file name to be ga-split-2.0.1.js

Of course, the next step is to update the PortalComponent to pull in the correct version of the file.

So why do you need to do this? Depending upon how your Portal and Load Balancers are setup with caching and expires headers, you won't push the correct version of the javascript file to the browser unless you update the file name! Why? It's common practice to set Expires headers in the far future and set the browser to cache the javascript file. If your setup is doing that, then any changes you make the the original JS file will not be pulled in unless your users happened to clear their browser cache. Since the chance of your entire user community pulling that off is miniscule, the only way to force them to get the new version of the file is to update the file name!

Also, be sure you head over and look at what Spyvee did to inspire these posts over at NetweaverCentral.

Enhanced Google Analytics in SAP Portal

If you happened to follow my post on integrating Google Analytics with SAP Portal, and attempted to implement it, you may have found some challenges with the reports. More specifically:

• If you're using the Light Framework (or derivation), all of your URLs are unreadable. They don't describe what is going on in the page since the Portal uses GUIDs as a URL parameter to gather the appropriate page.
• If you're using the Default Framework (or derivation), you only show hits on your entry point. Which is great for gathering browser information, but not so much for following user activity.
  
• In order to resolve this problem, you decide to add the Analytics iView to other pages in your Portal. Now all of your URLs are really unreadable. In fact, you will find that you receive multiple URLs for the same page, where the only difference is the windowID in the query string. This makes the data flat out unusable.

So, what to do?

There is a single fix that resolves both issues. The fix involves asking Portal where in the Navigation Tree you are. First, add in some imports to your code:

import com.sapportals.portal.navigation.INavigationNode;
import com.sapportals.portal.navigation.NavigationEventsHelperService;
import com.sapportals.portal.prt.runtime.PortalRuntime;
import com.sapportals.portal.prt.pom.IEvent;

In order to use these, you'll need to get the following JARs and import them into your project:

• com.sap.portal.navigation.api_service_api.jar
• com.sap.portal.navigation.helperservice_api.jar
• com.sap.portal.navigation.helperservice_core.jar

One of the methods you can override in an AbstractPortalComponent is doOnNodeReady(). This method is called once the PortalNode has been constructed. At this point, the node can ask the Portal for information. The method is implemented as follows:

    
protected void doOnNodeReady(IPortalComponentRequest request,IEvent arg1) {
    // Get the service to access the Navigation information
    NavigationEventsHelperService helperService =(NavigationEventsHelperService) PortalRuntime.getRuntimeResources().getService("com.sap.portal.navigation.helperservice.navigation_events_helper");
    // Get your current location in the navigation tree
    INavigationNode navTargetNode = helperService.getCurrentLaunchNavNode(request);
    StringBuffer fullPath = new StringBuffer(navTargetNode.getTitle(Locale.ENGLISH));
    // After stashing the title of the node, get the node's parent and loop
    // until you've reached the top node.  Stash each parent's name and build
    // a navigation "path" for use later.
    INavigationNode aParent = helperService.getParentNode(navTargetNode, request);
    while (aParent != null && !aParent.getTitle(Locale.ENGLISH).equals("")) {
        fullPath.insert(0, aParent.getTitle(Locale.ENGLISH) + "/");
        aParent = helperService.getParentNode(aParent, request);
    }
    // store the path in a member variable that can be used inside doContent()
    pageTitle = fullPath.toString();
}

Once you've created this path, you can then use it to track the page properly. Inside ga-split-2.js, you should remove the final line which calls pageTracker._trackPageview() Instead, you'll create a set of response.write() calls to use the pageTitle object and write a new snippet of code on each specific page.

The end of doContent will look as follows:

response.include(request, googleAnalyticsDataResource2);
response.write("<script type=\"text/javascript\">\n");
response.write("pageTracker._trackPageview(\""+ pageTitle +"\");\n");
response.write("</script>");

response.setContentType(PortalComponentContentType.HTML);

How to use the enhancements:

If you're in the light framework, it will just work. You can keep the code at the framework level and it will work on every page in the portal. If you're in the default framework, you'll need to add the code to each page that you want to track. You may want to remove the code from the framework and just track pages. The resulting reports will be far more readable and much better for your business users and portal sponsors who would likely be consuming the data (and pretty graphs) that Google Analytics provides.

How does a pacemaker get infected?

A friend of mine from college has an ICD in his chest. He's had it there for 20 years. Basically if his heart gets messed up, it restarts it. Knocks him on his ass and everything if it gets triggered. It looks really funny, but apparently isn't if you're the one getting knocked down (Insert annoying TumbaWumba song here)

Anyway, somehow, it got infected. Now he's up at the Cleveland Clinic getting a new one. Not quite certain how an internal item gets infected, but I guess it's possible, since it happened. Love to hear how that actually happens.

Been thinking about him quite a bit recently. He's going through some pretty annoying stuff due to his condition. Hopefully it goes well and without issue and he can get home and recover soon.