The module framework | HCL Digital Experience

The module framework allows extensions to contribute to different areas of a page to provide flexibility, enhance the user experience, and maximize performance.

The modularization framework decouples feature enablement from the theme code itself. Themes can be developed more easily with little knowledge about the details of how underlying code for a feature works. Logical points are provided where modules can contribute data into a theme at run time and then optimize those contributions by combining them where possible. Multiple disparate remote sources can be combined into one request for greater performance.

The features of a theme can be enabled and disabled by using a profile to configure them. You can then focus your time on the interface design of the theme without being concerned about the details of getting the features to work correctly within their theme. It is easy to turn off features that are not needed in one environment that might be used in another environment. For example, you can disable editing capabilities in a production portal environment, while they are enabled in a development environment. The same theme code can be used across such environments where the only variable is the module inclusion profile.

You can set dependencies on features in portlets and profiles. The features are automatically loaded onto the page in an aggregated way. Your profile does not need to contain more modules that are required by portlets. Your profile can be focused on theme capabilities. Modules that are only required by portlets can be loaded by the portlets. Portlet dependencies are loaded independently from the profile. If many portlets use the same features across many pages, you can add this feature to the profile for better cache performance. If you created your theme based on HCL Portal version 8.5 before CF03, then you must enable this feature to use it. Themes that are based on HCL Portal version 8.5 created in CF03 or after have this feature enabled by default.

Modules are registered extensions that are then used by a module profile. Each module is enumerated by the modules unique identifiers. A module might require other modules to allow the automatic inclusion of necessary code that is required to make a particular feature work. For example, you can use of the Dojo Toolkit within a module. A module can use the Dojo Toolkit to build custom widgets. To separate the code for the module from the Dojo code, the module requires certain Dojo modules to ensure that the code is loaded in the correct sequence. This separation allows greater serviceability by decoupling the packaging of the code for each module.