Can we have custom permissions defined for the portal?

Question

Environment: Liferay 6.1 GA3 EE

Can we have custom permissions defined for the portal?

We can create custom permissions in our plugin portlet through creating an XML with <portlet-resource> tag and defining the <action-key> within it.

And when I go to define permissions for a Role in Control Panel my portlet appears in the section Site Applications, now what I want is to create custom permissions (not through EXT) in a portlet or hook that should have a separate category as My Custom and should have custom permissions like <action-key>ACCESS_EMAIL</action-key>, <action-key>ACCESS_TOOLSET<\action-key> etc.

In short my custom category should appear within section Portal as shown in the following figure while I define the permission for a custom Portal (regular) role:

I would like to use this permission not for a specific portlet but need to use it inside jsp-hooks or any other of my custom portlets. Just like we have ADD_SITE, ADD_USER etc permissions in Portal --> General, I want to have these permissions as generic.

Edit
To make the portlet appear in any of the section I created a simple custom-portlet, so the portlet appeared in the Site Application section and if I want I can make it appear in the Control Panel sections as well.

But now the problem is I don't have any view nor any implementation in this portlet so I make it hidden by updating the liferay-display.xml and putting it under category.hidden. This also hides it from the Define Permission drop-down.

And if I don't use the lifeay-display.xml liferay puts it under the Undefined category while accessing it from +Add menu in dockbar. :-(

Thank You

Answer 1

This is how we achieved it:

1. Create a custom portlet with the permissions file for this portlet like /resource-actions/custompermission.xml to specify the different custom permissions we want. The full steps are identical to this wiki.
2. Make this portlet a hidden portlet so that it won't appear in the Add menu in dockbar, neither in Control-panel nor in the Define Permissions drop-down.

3. Now create a JSP hook (you can either create a separate plugin or include the hook in the custom-portlet defined in point no. 1) and modify the /docroot/html/portlet/roles_admin/edit_role_permissions_navigation.jspf to include our custom category:

   <aui:form action="<%= currentURL %>" name="resourceSelection">
       <aui:fieldset>
           <aui:select changesContext="<%= true %>" name="add-permissions" onchange='<%= renderResponse.getNamespace() + "addPermissions(this);" %>'>
               <aui:option label="" />
   
               <%-- Our customization starts here  --%>
   
               <%--
                   We have added our very own option group but this is not required just the <aui:option> will do
               --%>
               <optgroup label="<liferay-ui:message key="custom" />">
   
               <%
               if (_isCustomPermissionsPortlet(CUSTOM_PERMISSIONS_PORTLET)) {
   
                   editPermissionsURL.setParameter("portletResource", CUSTOM_PERMISSIONS_PORTLET);
                   editPermissionsURL.setParameter("showModelResources", "0");
               %>
   
                   <%--
                       and here we add our own Permission category drop-down option
                   --%>
   
                   <aui:option label="custom-permissions"
                           selected="<%= _isCurrent(editPermissionsURL.toString(), portletResource, showModelResources) %>"
                           value="<%= editPermissionsURL.toString() %>" />
   
               <%
               }
               %>
               </optgroup>
               <%-- Our customization ends here --%>
   
           <c:choose>
               <c:when test="<%= role.getType() == RoleConstants.TYPE_SITE %>">
                   <optgroup label="<liferay-ui:message key="administration" />">
   
                   <% // Other liferay stuff continues ...
   

   and at the end of the JSP we have:

   // ... other liferay stuff 
   
   private boolean _isOrganizationPortlet(String portletId) {
       return ArrayUtil.contains(_ORGANIZATION_PORTLETS, portletId);
   }
   
   private boolean _isPortalPortlet(String portletId) {
       return ArrayUtil.contains(_PORTAL_PORTLETS, portletId);
   }
   
   // Our customization starts here
   // portlet's ID
   public static final String CUSTOM_PERMISSIONS_PORTLET = "CustomPermissions_WAR_CustomPermissionsportlet";
   
   private static final String[] _CUSTOM_PERMISSIONS_PORTLET = {
       CUSTOM_PERMISSIONS_PORTLET,
   };
   
   private boolean _isCustomPermissionsPortlet(String portletId) {
       return ArrayUtil.contains(_CUSTOM_PERMISSIONS_PORTLET, portletId);
   }
   
   // Our customization ends here
   

   This is how it looks in the Control Panel:

   

   We can move the permissions in the Portal section as well by moving our customized code to that place in the JSP.

   The advantage of having it above is that it will be displayed when we want to set Define Permissions for Site Role.

Hope this helps somebody.