This option is only useful when using the Liferay StrutsPortlet framework. Suppose the struts-path value is "mail". This tells the portal that all requests with the path mail/* are considered part of this portlet's scope. Users who request paths that match mail/* will only be granted access if they also have access to this portlet. This is true for both portlet requests and regular servlet requests.

The configuration-path value is a Struts path that allows users to configure the portlet at runtime. The Struts path must reference a class that extends com.liferay.portal.struts.PortletAction.

The indexer-class value must be a class that implements com.liferay.util.lucene.Indexer and is called to create or update a search index for the portlet.

The scheduler-class value must be a class that implements com.liferay.portal.job.Scheduler and is called to schedule Quartz jobs for this portlet.

The portlet-url-class value must be a class that extends com.liferay.portlet.PortletURLImplWrapper. Set this class to override the default portlet URL implementation.

The portlet-url-class value must be a class that implements com.liferay.portal.servlet.FriendlyURLPortletPlugin. Use this if content inside a portlet needs to have a friendly URL. See the Message Boards portlet source code for an example of its uses.

The portlet-data-handler-class value must be a class that implements com.liferay.portal.kernel.lar.PortletDataHandler and is called when archiving tasks are run.

The smtp-message-listener-class value must be a class that implements com.liferay.portal.kernel.smtp.MessageListener and is called when processing emails.

Set the preferences-company-wide value to true if the preferences for the portlet are across the entire company. Setting this value to true means the value for preferences-unique-per-layout and preferences-owned-by-group are not used. The default value is false.

For example, an administrator could set the preferences to an Announcements portlet that would save a message in the portlet's preferences. This message would then be used across all pages for that company. The portlet must not be instanceable because instanceable portlets have uniquely generated portlet ids.

The default behavior of the bundled Announcements portlet sets the instanceable value to true so that normal users cannot create company wide messages. A future release would include permissions for the edit mode versus the view mode which would allow an administrator to set the message while users would just view the message.

Set the preferences-unique-per-layout value to true if the preferences for the portlet are unique for each page. If set to false, the preferences for the portlet are shared across all pages. The default value is true.

The preferences-unique-per-layout element is used in combination with the preferences-owned-by-group element. See the comments for the preferences-owned-by-group element for more information.

Set the preferences-owned-by-group value to true if the preferences for the portlet are owned by the group when the portlet is shown in a group page. If set to false, the preferences are owned by the user at all times. The default value is true.

Suppose the Stocks portlet has preferences-unique-per-layout set to true and preferences-owned-by-group set to false. Users can set a different list of stocks for every personal page. Users can set a different list of stocks for every community page.

Suppose the Stocks portlet has preferences-unique-per-layout set to false and preferences-owned-by-group set to false. Users can set one list of stocks to be shared across all personal pages. Users can set one list of stocks to be shared across a community's set of pages.

Suppose the Stocks portlet has preferences-unique-per-layout set to true and preferences-owned-by-group set to true. Users can set a different list of stocks for every personal page. Administrators set the portlet preferences for users in a community page. Administrators can set a different list of stocks for every community page that are then shared by all users within a community.

Suppose the Stocks portlet has preferences-unique-per-layout set to false and preferences-owned-by-group set to true. Users can set one list of stocks to be shared across all personal pages. Administrators set the portlet preferences for users in a community page. Administrators can set one list of stocks to be shared by all users across a community's set of pages.

Set the use-default-template value to true if the portlet uses the default template to decorate and wrap content. Setting this to false allows the developer to own and maintain the portlet's entire outputted content. The default value is true.

The most common use of this is if you want the portlet to look different from the other portlets or if you want the portlet to not have borders around the outputted content.

Set the show-portlet-access-denied value to true if users are shown the portlet with an access denied message if they do not have access to the portlet. If set to false, users are never shown the portlet if they do not have access to the portlet. The default value is set in portal.properties.

Set the show-portlet-inactive value to true if users are shown the portlet with an inactive message if the portlet is inactive. If set to false, users are never shown the portlet if the portlet is inactive. The default value is set in portal.properties.

Set the action-url-redirect value to true if an action URL for this portlet should cause an auto redirect. This helps prevent double submits. The default value is false.

Set the restore-current-view value to true if the portlet restores to the current view when toggling between maximized and normal states. If set to false, the portlet will reset the current view when toggling between maximized and normal states. The default value is true.

Set the maximize-edit value to true if the portlet goes into the maximized state when the user goes into the edit mode. This only affects the default portal icons and not what may be programmatically set by the portlet developer. The default value is false.

Set the maximize-help value to true if the portlet goes into the maximized state when the user goes into the edit mode. This only affects the default portal icons and not what may be programmatically set by the portlet developer. The default value is false.

Set the maximize-print value to true if the portlet goes into the maximized state when the user goes into the edit mode. This only affects the default portal icons and not what may be programmatically set by the portlet developer. The default value is false.

Set the layout-cacheable flag to true if the data contained in this portlet will never change unless the layout or portlet entry is changed.

Set the instanceable value to true if the portlet can appear multiple times on a page. If set to false, the portlet can only appear once on a page. The default value is false.

Set the private-request-attributes value to true if the portlet does not share request attributes with any other portlet. The default value is true.

The default value of render-weight is 1. If set to a value less than 1, the portlet is rendered in parallel. If set to a value of 1 or greater, then the portlet is rendered serially. Portlets with a greater render weight have greater priority and will be rendered before portlets with a lower render weight.

If the ajaxable value is set to false, then render-weight is always set to 1if it is set to a value less than 1. This means ajaxable can override render-weight if ajaxable is set to false.

The default value of ajaxable is true. If set to false, then this portlet can never be displayed via Ajax.

If the add-default-resource value is set to false, and the portlet does not belong to the page but has been dynamically added, then the user will see that he does not have permissions to view the portlet. If the add-default-resource value is set to true, the default portlet resources and permissions are added to the page. The user can then view the portlet. Most portlets are harmless and can benefit from this flexibility. However, to prevent security loop holes, the default value is false.

Set the system value to true if the portlet is a system portlet that a user cannot manually add to their page. The default value is false.

Set the active value to true if the portlet is active and available to users. If set to false, the portlet will not be active or available to users. The default value is true.

This value can be changed at runtime via the Admin portlet.

Set the include value to true to if the portlet is available to the portal. If set to false, the portlet is not available to the portal. The default value is true. Portlets that are not included as part of the portal are never available to the user to be made active or inactive. As far the user knows, the portlets do not even exist in the system. This allows the Liferay developers to bundle a lot of portlets in one core package, and yet allow custom deployments to turn on or off individual portlets or sets of portlets. This follows the Siebel and Microsoft model of bundling everything in one core package, but using XML configuration or registry settings to turn on and off features or sets of features. We do not recommend that custom deployers modify the core source by removing specific portlets because this prevents an easy upgrade process in the future. The best way to turn on and off portlets is to set the include element. The advantage of this way of doing things is that it becomes very easy to deploy Liferay. All features are available in one package. The disadvantage is that by not utilizing all of the portlets, you are wasting disk space and may even take a small but static memory footprint. However, we feel that the extra disk space and memory usage is a cheap price to pay in order to provide an easy installation and upgrade path.

The role-mapper contains two names specified by role-name and role-link. The role-name value must be a role specified in portlet.xml. The role-link value must be the name of a Liferay role that exists in the database. The role-mapper element pairs up these two values to map roles from portlet.xml to roles in the Liferay database. This is needed because Liferay roles may contain spaces whereas roles in portlet.xml cannot contain spaces. This also adds extra flexibility where the portlet vendor does not need to have any knowledge about Liferay's roles.

The custom-user-attribute contains a list of names that are retrieved using a custom class that extends com.liferay.portlet.CustomUserAttributes.

For a usage example, download the sample hot deployable portlet WAR named test.war. Look for the class com.liferay.portlet.teststruts.TestStrutsUserAttributes to see how it associates the custom user attribute "user.name.test" with the value "Test Name". This class could be modified to read custom user attributes from another datasource that may be a database, a LDAP server, or a web service.