External Content Properties

With the External Content presentation object you can show content from some other website or web portal. The External Content presentation object uses html's iframe element to embed the websites. Using the External Content presentation object enables integrating multiple Web applications into a single UI.

Properties Tab

The following properties can be set on the Properties tab:

• Name: Name of the External Content presentation object.
• Description: Description for the External Content presentation object.
• External Content URL: The URL of the external page you want to embed in QPR UI. You can also use a relative path (e.g. "/examples/test.html"), if the page you want to embed is accessible by the same protocol, host, and port as QPR UI.

Accessing Context Variables in the External Webpage

See the setSessionVariable function that can be called to change context variables in the external webpage. Note that the external webpage must be linked using the same server name and port as QPR UI, so that these JavaScript functions can be called. This is because of web browsers security features (same origin policy).

There is a test page available in the QPR UI where the functioning of changing variables can be tested: /ui/examples/test.html.

Passing effective context in the url

To access the external presentation object's effective context, you can pass context variable values in the iFrame url using the <#variableName> syntax. Example:

http(s)://SERVERNAME/ExternalPresentationObjects/ExternalPresentationObject1#variable1=<#variable1>&variable2=<#variable2>

If the variable references appear after the hash mark (#), the external web page is not refreshed when the context variables values change. In the external web page, url changes can be monitored through onhashchange javascript event of the window object. The following example registers a function that is called when the url changes:

window.onhashchange = function() {
  var iFrameUrl = window.location.href;
  var listOfParameters = iFrameUrl.substr(iFrameUrl.indexOf("#") + 1));
}

Web browser security considerations

Some websites prevent themselves to be embedded into other websites using iFrame. In those cases, the external content presentation object will be left blank (in Chrome and Firefox) or there may be an error message "This content cannot be displayed in a frame" (in Internet Explorer). The way to workaround the issue is to have X-Frame-Options HTTP response header changed in the embedded website (more information: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Headers/X-Frame-Options). Template:MDBTutorialExternalContent