Liferay is a popular open-source digital experience platform (DXP) that provides a range of tools and features for building web and mobile applications. When it comes to front-end development in Liferay, there are a few key concepts and technologies to be familiar with. Here's an overview of Liferay front-end development:
Theme Development: In Liferay, themes are used to control the look and feel of your application. They define the layout, styles, and templates used to render the user interface. Liferay supports different theme frameworks such as AlloyUI, Bootstrap, and AngularJS, allowing you to choose the one that suits your needs. You can customize existing themes or create your own from scratch.
Templating Language: Liferay uses a templating language called FreeMarker for dynamic content generation. FreeMarker allows you to embed logic and variables within your templates, enabling you to create dynamic and personalized user interfaces.
Portlets: Liferay applications are often built using portlets, which are self-contained components that can be added to a page and provide specific functionality. Portlets can have their own front-end code, including HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, to define their user interface and behavior.
JavaScript Libraries and Frameworks: Liferay supports the use of various JavaScript libraries and frameworks for front-end development. You can leverage popular libraries like jQuery, React, or Angular to enhance the interactivity and functionality of your applications.
REST APIs: Liferay provides a comprehensive set of RESTful APIs that allow you to interact with its backend services. You can use these APIs to fetch data, create, update, or delete resources, and perform various operations from your front-end code.
Asset Publishing: Liferay includes a built-in asset publishing system that allows you to manage and display different types of content, such as articles, documents, images, and videos. You can customize the rendering of these assets to match your desired front-end design.
Theme Fragments: Liferay introduced theme fragments to promote reusability and modularity in front-end development. Theme fragments are small, self-contained pieces of code that can be reused across different themes and applications. They provide a way to build and maintain consistent UI components.
Liferay Front-End Tools: Liferay provides several tools to aid front-end development. For example, you can use Liferay's Developer Studio or Blade CLI to create and manage projects, develop themes, and build and deploy your front-end code efficiently.