Concept Of Liferay Hook

---

Liferay Hook is one type of plugins by which we can customize liferay core functionality. Liferay comes with many features. Sometimes it may not be enough to fulfill our requirements or sometimes the default behavior of the portal need to be customized.For example you want to change some JSP pages or services etc. Keeping all these things in mind Liferay engineers has developed a way to customize the core portal. In simple liferay hook is just a hot deploy able plugin whose main task is to change liferay functionality.  

---

10 Key Points for Beginners

1. Why do wee need Hook?

Answer: Hook is required to customize Liferay core functionality.

2. How to deploy a Hook?

Answer: Once hook is developed it can be put in liferay deploy folder for deployment.

3. Whats the final artifact for Hook?

Answer: Its a WAR file. 

4. Is Liferay Hooks are hot deploy able?

Answer: Yes.

5.Once Hook deployed can it be undeployed?

Answer: Yes.

6.For Hook development is any tools necessary?

Answer: Practically No. But at least you need Plugin SDK and Liferay Bundle.

7.Can we use Eclipse to develop Hook?

Answer: Yes. Your eclipse need Liferay IDE plugin. 

8.Can we customize anything in Liferay by Hook?

Answer: No. There are some limitations.

9.Can we deploy multiples Hook in one portal server?

Answer: Yes.

10.What can we customize by Liferay Hook?

Answer:  JSP, Liferay Services, Struts Action and many more.

---

Full List: What we can customize by Liferay Hook (based on 6.2)

i) Customizing JSPs

ii) Customizing Sites and Site Templates

iii) Performing a Custom Action

iv) Extending and Overriding portal.properties

v) Overriding and Adding Struts Actions

vi) Overriding a Portal Service

vii) Overriding a Language.properties File

viii) Extending the Indexer Post Processor

ix) Servlet Filter Hook

---