[Liferay] [Hook] Fix for Special Characters in Friendly URL of Web Content

Friends,

In the last post [Liferay] Show Web Content in a different page using Asset Publisher we learned how to use asset publisher to display web content in specific portlet and make it a fit for most of the requirements.

That time, I also mentioned that a problem exists if we use special characters in title of web content, it creates some problem. Problem is that, Liferay replaces most of the special characters while generating unique url for the web content but fails to recognize all. That leads to existence of special characters in title and Liferay fails to show that web content in specific portlet.

Solution was simple, replace all special characters which Liferay code missed. Liferay takes care of these characters in FriendlyURLNormalizerImpl.

	char[] replaceChars = new char[] {
	' ', ',', '\\', '\'', '\"', '(', ')', '[', ']', '{', '}', '?', '#',
	'@', '+', '~', ';', '$', '%', '!', '=', ':', '&'
	};

view raw FriendlyURLNormalizerImpl.java hosted with ❤ by GitHub

Changing FriendlyURLNormalizerImpl was not easier as per our project requirements so I fixed JournalContentLocalServiceImpl instead. I created a service wrapper hook and changed the code for addArticle(...)

	package me.rkg.plugins;
	import java.io.File;
	import java.util.Locale;
	import java.util.Map;
	import com.liferay.portal.kernel.exception.PortalException;
	import com.liferay.portal.kernel.exception.SystemException;
	import com.liferay.portal.kernel.log.Log;
	import com.liferay.portal.kernel.log.LogFactoryUtil;
	import com.liferay.portal.kernel.util.StringPool;
	import com.liferay.portal.service.ServiceContext;
	import com.liferay.portlet.journal.NoSuchArticleException;
	import com.liferay.portlet.journal.model.JournalArticle;
	import com.liferay.portlet.journal.service.JournalArticleLocalServiceWrapper;
	import com.liferay.portlet.journal.service.JournalArticleLocalService;
	/**
	* @author Ravi Kumar Gupta
	*
	* Purpose of this hook is to remove all special characters from urlTitle of journal article and keep only alphanumeric string with (-)DASHes.
	*
	*/
	public class MyJournalArticleLocalServiceImpl extends JournalArticleLocalServiceWrapper {
	public MyJournalArticleLocalServiceImpl(JournalArticleLocalService journalArticleLocalService) {
	// TODO Auto-generated constructor stub
	super(journalArticleLocalService);
	}
	@Override
	public JournalArticle addArticle(long userId, long groupId, long classNameId, long classPK, String articleId,
	boolean autoArticleId, double version, Map<Locale, String> titleMap, Map<Locale, String> descriptionMap,
	String content, String type, String structureId, String templateId, String layoutUuid,
	int displayDateMonth, int displayDateDay, int displayDateYear, int displayDateHour, int displayDateMinute,
	int expirationDateMonth, int expirationDateDay, int expirationDateYear, int expirationDateHour,
	int expirationDateMinute, boolean neverExpire, int reviewDateMonth, int reviewDateDay, int reviewDateYear,
	int reviewDateHour, int reviewDateMinute, boolean neverReview, boolean indexable, boolean smallImage,
	String smallImageURL, File smallImageFile, Map<String, byte[]> images, String articleURL,
	ServiceContext serviceContext) throws PortalException, SystemException {
	JournalArticle article = super.addArticle(userId, groupId, classNameId, classPK, articleId, autoArticleId,
	version, titleMap, descriptionMap, content, type, structureId, templateId, layoutUuid,
	displayDateMonth, displayDateDay, displayDateYear, displayDateHour, displayDateMinute,
	expirationDateMonth, expirationDateDay, expirationDateYear, expirationDateHour, expirationDateMinute,
	neverExpire, reviewDateMonth, reviewDateDay, reviewDateYear, reviewDateHour, reviewDateMinute,
	neverReview, indexable, smallImage, smallImageURL, smallImageFile, images, articleURL, serviceContext);
	String urlTitle = article.getUrlTitle();
	if (_log.isDebugEnabled()) {
	_log.debug("urlTitle before change: " + urlTitle);
	}
	urlTitle = urlTitle.replaceAll("[^a-zA-Z0-9_-]+", "");
	if (_log.isDebugEnabled()) {
	_log.debug("urlTitle after replacement: " + urlTitle);
	}
	// Running the loop in case the urlTitle after replacement already exists for some other article.
	for (int i = 1;; i++) {
	JournalArticle article1 = null;
	try {
	article1 = getArticleByUrlTitle(groupId, urlTitle);
	} catch (NoSuchArticleException nsae) {
	}
	if ((article1 == null) || articleId.equals(article1.getArticleId())) {
	break;
	} else {
	String suffix = StringPool.DASH + i;
	String prefix = urlTitle;
	if (urlTitle.length() > suffix.length()) {
	prefix = urlTitle.substring(0, urlTitle.length() - suffix.length());
	}
	urlTitle = prefix + suffix;
	}
	}
	// updating existing article with new urlTitle
	article.setUrlTitle(urlTitle);
	super.updateJournalArticle(article);
	if (_log.isDebugEnabled()) {
	_log.debug("Updated urlTitle via hook : " + article.getUrlTitle());
	}
	return article;
	}
	private static Log _log = LogFactoryUtil.getLog(MyJournalArticleLocalServiceImpl.class);
	}

view raw MyJournalArticleLocalServiceImpl.java hosted with ❤ by GitHub

This code replaces the special characters from existing title and updates article. This hook must be present before we create a web content.

That's it for now.

Until next time. :)