Although JSR 168 specifies that portlets do NOT have access to the client request of the portal (JSR 168, p. 16),  Liferay developers will find that they do have access to this URL.  If using the extension environment, take a peek at the JSP source in:

[liferay]portal\portal-web\docroot\html\portlet\init.jsp

Once there, youl’ll find the following code:

String currentURL = PortalUtil.getCurrentURL(request);

This means that each portlet JSP has immediate access to the original URL without any special tokens or encoding.  And since this file is included in the downstream JSP, you only need to access “currentURL” within your JSP to have access. You never know when this might come in handy!

Coding Tip: If you’re using Liferay Open source portlets, the folder within the portal source named portal-impl contains both the class libraries and the source code to both the portal-based servlets as well as all the portlet code.

I’ve finally placed two short articles in the learning center:

• Intro to Portlet Development
• Moving from Servlet to Portlet Development

Check out the Learning Center in the future for more articles.